Objective Correlative

Watching “Mean Girls” with my 12-yr Old Daughter

2011-09-21T05:53:00.001-07:00

My husband felt that it was highly inappropriate that I watch this movie with my daughter.

“How can you think it might actually help her to watch this movie? You are just imposing your American neuroses about high school and coolness on somebody who has no relation to those neuroses whatsoever.”

Growing up in France shaped my husband’s perspective on high school and what it means to be a geek or cool. The most prestigious schools in France are public and those schools start to select students at age 16. The most nerdy kids are not only guaranteed the best jobs in the public and private sector, but higher pay than non-graduates of the Grandes Ecoles. They can also expect a fast-track career to the top of their chosen company or field. When you no longer interact with the subset of “cool” people in 11th grade and the reason for that is that most those people have been segregated into lesser tracks that prepare them for the second-tier opportunities they can expect in life…it’s easy not to be intimidated or impressed.

My fellow students in my private American preparatory school had other reasons to expect the choicer outcomes in Life.

“That’s alright. That’s ok, you’ll work for us one day,” they would cheer when we inevitably lost football games to the large county public schools. To the school’s chagrin, having the football team with the highest average SAT score in the state of Georgia did not translate into the winning-est football team in the state of Georgia.

Undoubtedly the “John Knox Institute” students behind that sour grapes cheer picked up the Class prejudice and un-sportsmanlike tone from their parents. Officially the school did everything to discourage such behavior. Along with the Protestant religious tenets underlying our education, the centerpiece of the school’s pride in producing morally upstanding young ladies and gentleman was the Honor Code – one of those pacts where you not only swear that you have not cheated on a test or assignment, you swear that you have no knowledge of such behavior on the part of your peers.

Well the TJKNI students weren’t perfect. Some of them did cheat. And, since time immemorial ratting out your peers (or “narking” as we called it) is about the surest path to social suicide -- it didn’t take long for your average student to figure out the Honor Code and the student Prefect System (basically a popularity contest) was a load of crap. If adults weren’t smart enough to figure to out the Honor Code wasn’t compatible with the emotional maturity of your average high school student, they were dumb.

Worse, if they did realize the flaws in these expectations, they were indoctrinating us in moral hypocrisy. The parents were often the administration’s willing partners. If TJKNI demanded that the students exhibit the same behavior off campus that they did on campus – basically don’t drink, do drugs, screw around and do the generally dumb-ass things teenagers do, the parents were often the first to lie on their child’s behalf.

The John Knox Institute kids not only felt superior to the children outside their school, many of them also felt superior to most of their classmates. My first introduction to the other students at The Institute, when I transferred in 7th grade, was a friendly “student ambassador”-type phone call from a girl I had vaguely seen around because her parents lived next door to my grandparents. She only had one question for me: “Are you popular?” My convoluted explanation of how, while I was not exactly popular, I did have a group of friends who didn’t think I was a loser didn’t convince her. I don’t think she ever said another word to me in the six years we went to school together.

Does that sum up my whole experience of TJKI? Of course not, I did make good friends in high school, I had some wonderful teachers and I received an excellent education. However, yes, I can definitely relate to the movie “Mean Girls.” Unlike the movie’s main character, the good girl played by Lindsay Lohan (how ironic is that) I never became close enough to these people for them to 1) notice me 2) think I was important enough to humiliate.

Regardless of how many times I watched “Sixteen Candles” in the hopes that I would come back in the fall and have it be my cool year or how many hours I babysat to buy that bitchin pair of acid-washed Guess jeans with the zipper on the ankles, I did not have what it took to be part of the cool group. They seemed to fall into two categories: DNA or attitude. Under DNA, appearance was most important for the girls and athletic ability was most important for the boys. Attitude was the trait that was more confusing for me to understand at the time. Self-confidence was central. Granted, it’s pretty easy to develop self-confidence as pretty girl or outstanding athlete in high school—people just naturally want to be around you. However, not all the girls in the group were that pretty and not all that boys were sports stars, yet they still managed to dominated people with their attitude. Sometimes, this was with good qualities –they might have had a great sense of humor or who were genuinely nice to everybody; sometimes they dominated with negative attitude.

“Queen Bees and Wannabes” explores the negative strategies girls use to intimidate their peers; often with the perverse outcome that the meaner the dominant individuals are, the more people want to be liked by them. This experience is not limited to high school and junior high girls. My work experience in the online mostly male-dominated, geeky software blogging world had its share Queen Bee and Wannabe behavior too. In "Sixteen Candles”, Anthony Michael Hall’s nerdy character isn’t any nicer to his geeky friends than the cool kids are to him. He humiliates and dominates them in his bid to be “King of the Dipshits” or, better yet, increase his social standing by leaving them behind.

Enough of me, I’ve gone way off course. How did this movie help me communicate with my pre-teen daughter?

She isn’t really acting like my friend.

No kidding. This girl constantly undermines you to make herself feel better. Her only interest in having you around is to have a courtier for her queenly presence.

But she can be so nice.

Yes, they can. It’s known as a “frenemy”. Or sometimes the nice girls in elementary school morph into little snots when they hit Junior high. In that case, she used to be your friend.

She’s so full of herself

Take a preteen girl and have enough adults tell her: “You should be a model” enough times. It’s a miracle if it doesn’t go to her head.

But she told me to do it.

Grow a spine. Evaluate the consequences of your actions. Learn to say no.

Everything about my appearance is wrong.

Let me spell out. There’s a downside to everything you claim you wish had.

Want be taller? Well, so and so is shorter than you and I’m also pretty sure that hasn’t stopped her from being a kick-ass dancer. Try finding a date in high school if most the boys are shorter than you.

Think your hair is too curly; well I’m sure plenty of girls complain that their straight hair is too limp and stringy. You want boobs? Do you really want “that” kind of attention from a bunch of Junior High boys? Want to be a well-endowed adult woman? For you, most the heterosexual “men” will morph back into good old Beavis and Butthead. Oh and do you really want to go jogging with two sports bras and have to worry about back pain?

You look just fine. And, anyway, its not like you can do anything about it, you got all that stuff before you were born, in your DNA. And, don’t dare think about blaming your father and me, because those same genes make you good at Math and a great runner. Stop worrying about how you look. You want people to look at you? Why don’t you DO something worthy of that attention?

The adults around me are less mature than I am.

Mean Girls don’t always happen in a vaccum. In the movie, the Queen Bee’s mother is portrayed as the “I Just Want to Be My Child’s Friend” archetype. We all know this type of woman. She is more invested in her daughter’s popularity than the girl is, herself. This is the kind of woman who boasts about a social life that involves partying like a 19-year old college freshman. Sorry Mrs. “She’s still pre-occupied with 1985,” the rest of us have left the snake-skin mini-skirt and the 80s behind us. You are your child’s parent. By definition you are not cool to them, the fact that you try just makes it worse. They may not be able to express it now, but your kid doesn’t want you to be their “friend” they want you to be their parent.

Some parents simply check out of the child-rearing process altogether or choose to remain willfully clueless. I call them Ostrich Parent. Their child or other parents may try to talk to them, but they just bury their heads in the sand. “Not my child” is their motto.

Thank you Amy Chua. If it hadn’t been for you, the rest of us wouldn’t have a name for the other kind of emotionally immature parent we find so obnoxious (as does your child) – Tiger Mom or Tiger Dad, also known as Helicopter Parent aka that rude parent at some run of the mill kids’ athletic competition who shouts coaching instructions to their child the whole time and then gives the child a 15-minute public critique of their performance…after they win! So often, the person shouting, “You gotta master that back-hand slice” to their child is the person who couldn’t hit a backhand slice if their life depended on it.

Things I didn’t like about “Mean Girls,” the movie:

I love Tina Fey to death, but sometimes the Saturday Night Live humor is out of place in a movie, destined to appeal to teens.

Lots of swearing. I’ve always been a fan of a creative and well-placed swear, but not when it doesn’t add anything, and not in a movie for my children. The girls in the movie call each other “bitch” and “slut” a lot. On one hand, girls really do say these things. On the other hand, the movie barely addresses whether they should and how this might just be reinforcing the images that boys, and later men, use to put them down. I think some women view the word “bitch” like rappers view the n word: it’s ok if we use it among ourselves, but wrong if a man calls us this.

The underlying connotation of “bitch” is a woman who stands up for herself – positive—but does it in an off-putting way – negative. I prefer bitch to slut. At least a bitch does. A slut is done to. The most negative thing about “slut” is not so much the sexual mores of the girl in question, but the fact that she doesn’t respect herself enough to make men respect her. It’s not just a question of her actions but the how and why, behind her actions. Boys in my high school were a lot more creative. They didn’t just call a girl a slut, they said things like “When X gives you a bj you have to pull the sheets out of your ass” or “She’d jump anything, even a whittled stick.”

The sad thing is I can remember those associations if I run into or hear about those girls years after high school.

Not only did the swearing not add anything, but the scene where the football coach gets caught having sex with two different high school girls did not add anything either. It wasn’t particularly funny. The most positive thing I can say is that I don’t think my daughter really caught what was going on, in that part.

Conclusion

In conclusion, did I use Mean Girls to exorcise some of my own memories of high school? My experience at The John Knox Institute did have an impact, even when I use it to define the things I don’t want for myself, or my children. I remember a conversation where The JKNI name came up as it inevitably would in a state where they are the academic reference – send more than 20 kids to the Ivy League a year, etc. My husband got tired of what he calls “people gargling themselves with their moral imperatives” and summed it up: “Yeah, yeah I get it: your mission is for these kids to get a good education like TJKNI, but not be dicks!”

Don Raaaaamiiiiiiro

2011-06-15T10:34:00.001-07:00

As I wait for my child by the entrance of our apartment building, I notice Don Ramiro walking out. The eighty-year old man in his pressed suit and tie, heads off to whatever pretend job he goes to, the kind where the “girl” fetches him coffee while he does the crossword puzzles and plans his lunch dates with his Franco-era cronies.

Is the middle-aged man deferentially following Don Ramiro a new man-servant? Could the old codger be getting more feeble? I discuss it with my husband. He’s doubtful “Nah, the bad ones hang on forever. Their toxic personality acts as a preservative.” I have another theory. “Maybe they’re secretly afraid of Hell?”

Don Ramiro is a machista who thinks he’s a gentleman. He feels immensely superior to women and to foreigners. He hates children. He has neither manners, nor education, nor culture, nor any professional distinction that I’ve heard of. He did, however, have enough common sense to marry the daughter of a president of a national bank. This means that he manages his wife’s inheritance, which includes three apartments in our building. No self-respecting third world dictator presiding over his domains takes himself more seriously than Don Ramiro executing his responsibilities as head of the Building Association of Serrano XX.

In this capacity, he once dragged us to court and tried to kick us out of the building on the grounds that our uncivilized American habits caused us to wake up too early in the morning (7am) and our children made too much noise.

Don Ramiro, if we have to leave this building, I hope the next tenant is an Arab or African soccer player. If it’s a childless Spanish couple. I hope they have lots of parties, smoke crack and play really loud music. I hope the next renter decides to use the apartment as the locale for his thriving Casa Putas. Don Ramiro, when you get older and more infirm, I hope the poor third world woman taking care of you isn’t very nice. I hope she forgets to change your diapers and lets you sit in them. I hope you sit there powerless in your wheelchair while she watches her favorite telenovelas every time there’s a Clasico or Champion’s League soccer game on TV.

And when it’s your time, I hope the chasm of Hell opens up and the demons drag you down while the orchestra plays the finale of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Trebuchet

2011-05-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

Dear God,
When it comes time for my 8-yr old son to take the SATs, in about nine years from now, could you please do me a favor and make sure it includes the word “trebuchet”? He has not sat down at the piano willingly to practice at any time this year, except for 7:30 the morning…after his 12-year old sister’s sleep-over party…when the girls had gone to bed at 3 am. When this failed to impress the girls, he and his twin moved on to streaking.

However, he has a very impressive knowledge of medieval siege engines due to many school bus hours playing Age of Empires, Age of Kings on the Nintendo DS. I believe this is teaching him some basic notions of cash flow, as well. Recently, he learned that his feudal village rents were not bringing in enough income to support his war-mongering proclivities. He has an impressive smattering of Roman military knowledge (Thank you Astérix! ) and can describe the Siege of Gondor (Lord of the Rings) at length.

Sometimes we non-tiger mothers need a break.

Nathalie

Dear Sexist Media,

2011-05-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

Can we please have more photos of these fellows shirtless please?

Cause when you look like this,

and you’re not as smart as him (Dial a hooker),
then maybe you have to stoop to assaulting the woman who cleans your toilet and changes your bed linens.

In the words of French electropop singer and sometime philosopher Yelle:

…Alors les filles on se promene
Ouais on va aux chippendales
On navait pas prevu de passer la soiree avec des rigolos
On voulait voir des pectoraux, des mecs montes comme des taureaux...
Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir

Difference in French, American Attitudes comes to forefront in DSK Arrest

2011-05-19T03:26:00.001-07:00

It's hard to miss the culture clash in the differing coverage the American, British and French press give the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), the French IMF-head who was arrested in New York city after allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid.

The French journalists and public are particularly upset about the perceived lack of dignity with which Strauss-Kahn is being treated. They feel the pictures of him, unshaven and unkempt and handcuffed after his night in jail, are degrading to his individual dignity. They proudly point to French laws that forbid photographing suspects before they have been formally convicted of a crime. They feel that allowing journalists in the courtroom, undermines the legal process and turns the proceedings into a media circus.

The Americans, and to a lesser degree the British, feel the French press is to blame for a so-called "conspiracy of silence" that protected a "sexual predator." The French respond that the private sex lives of public figures are not their concern unless this somehow unduly impacts the manner in which those public figures perform the jobs they were elected to fulfill. For instance, not interested that former French president, Mittérand had a long-standing mistress and a love-child. If he had been using public funds to maintain his mistress and love child it would have been another story.

Apparently, DSK's third wife, Anne Sinclair, is not bothered by her husband's reputation for running after women. In public, she proclaims that she is proud of it and that it is "important for a politician to be able to seduce." I agree with the French press' restraint in reporting on this aspect of politician's lives. However, they need to understand that if the US press seems to go too far in the other extreme, it is because American politicians, are held to a different standard. In the US, for better or worse, demonstrating an upstanding personal life is part of how many politicians, especially those of the conservative Republican stripe, sell themselves to the American people. So it does make sense, that if the politician has campaigned on a "family-values" platform, which, in the US, means marital fidelity, or supports a very anti-gay conservative platform, then is revealed in the act of picking up men in airport restrooms, it makes sense to expose them. Meanwhile in the case of US politicians who did not campaign on the conservative "family values" platform or pretend in anyway that their personal life was a mirror for their qualities in government, I feel we should leave their private lives alone. While I did not like his equivocation on a lot of other issues, I never felt Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was a matter of interest for the American people and the American government. His election campaign was based on the economy, not his upstanding private life.

The conservative American argument is that a person's personal life is a reflection of their probable probity in public office. I disagree. While it would be nice to believe that having a reproach-free private life guarantees the ability to successfully govern, it's just impossible to demonstrate this correlation based on historical examples. Presidents like FDR and JFK were arguably successful presidents, and fidelity to their wives was not their strong point. Meanwhile, I have never heard any real reproach on Barack Obama's qualities as a husband and father, yet that doesn't stop American conservatives from lambasting his presidency. On the contrary, they supported John McCain, who emerged from his POW experience to find that his wife who had remained faithful and supported him the whole time of his imprisonment had become handicapped and aged badly. He promptly divorced her to marry a much younger heiress with a politically-connected father...yet this never seemed to bother the "family values" party.

Back to DSK, what does shock me from the French media analysis is their failure to differentiate from consensual sex and sexual aggression. They wash their hands of DSK's past, saying that they never investigated French journalist, Tristane Banon's account that DSK tried to rape her when she met him for an interview almost a decade ago because the alleged victim never formally denounced her aggressor. Apparently they all knew this was DSK, even though his name was deleted from the report. I disagree with their failure to investigate. The most most cursory glance at Miss Banon's profile would suggest that her mother's affiliation with the Socialist party, her family friendship with DSK's daughter, the fact that his second wife was her godmother and her position as a young journalist who did not want to be identified as "the woman who had a problem with a politician" explain why she did not denounce him. Her own mother counseled against it. However, the violence of Ms. Banon's account and the fact that she had so little personally to gain by making the accusation (rather the reverse) should have inspired them to look further into the story. One interesting contradiction I noted is that the American press and legal system is more solicitous in protecting the privacy of the alleged victim. They have not published her name; whereas the French press has.

As far as precedents go, most Americans are resentful that the French failed to extradite film director, Roman Polanski. Way to go France, glad you think the fact that he's a great film director and we're such Puritans who fail to "appreciate the pleasures of the flesh" excuses the fact that a 43-yr old man should have stood trial for drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year-old American girl.

Only one journalist I came across in yesterday's Libération suggested that there is something wrong when the entire press corp of a country knows that they cannot send female journalists alone to interview a certain politician. In the same issue of Libé, Anne Sugier, President of the International League of Women's Rights is the only person who seemed to express any sympathy for the alleged victim's dignity and status. Meanwhile, French lawyer, Matthieu Bouchier, says that the physical part of the process of being detained and charged with a crime and the prison conditions in France are very similar to those in the US. The difference is that the French are not aware of it, because the media is not allowed to show it.

Frankly I am not at all sympathetic to those who complain about the humiliation to France of showing DSK in handcuffs. Sufficient evidence compelled the New York police to detain him and investigate him for a crime in the US. There is nothing special about the way DSK is being treated, except for the degree of media interest in covering it. Maybe if this had happened to an American of similar stature in France he would have been given more special treatment. This could not happen in the US. The underpinning of the US democratic ethos is that we CANNOT show that one of the most powerful men in the world gets different treatment from a common perp charged with a sex crime (even if this is not really true, once the wealthy person's expensive legal defense kicks in). Welcome to "Law and Order SVU". Nowhere, do I see any French appreciation of a justice system where an immigrant woman with no friends who works as a hotel maid can charge a wealthy and powerful man of a crime and be taken seriously. In fact, in fact they might take a look at the special immunity they give their elected officials, and their privacy and libel laws because there are plenty of financial(not sexual!) misdeeds that occupants of France's highest elected offices seem to get away with over the years.

Meanwhile, I agree that the American legal system is too much of a media circus with judges, defense lawyers and the prosecution, displaying a rather disgusting theatricality and self-promotion. I also agree that the American press is pretty dismal in its reporting in general, with a hyper-local emphasis and that the more respectable press is chasing ratings by digging deeper and deeper down into the "People" magazine and "National Enquirer" territory.

The US public has an insatiable appetite for police and law and order television dramas, and the formula for success there depends on contrasting the high position of the suspected criminal (international banker, wealthy man, possible next president of France) with the lowly status of his victim (immigrant hotel maid, with few friends and no family in the US). The US loves to build people up, but it also loves to take them down. They are not alone in their appetite for schadenfreude. Regardless of his professional competence, long before this latest incident, Dominique Strauss-Kahn came across as a very arrogant man, with a predatory relationship towards women (even if no proven past of sexual violence - much of this would qualify as harassment), whose taste for the luxury life contrasted with his Socialist party political affiliation - he embodied "la gauche caviar" - the caviar left.

Some of this stuff just doesn't translated literally into English. My favorite lost-in-translation? "Hot rabbit" which comes from the French "chaud lapin". The more Classical allusion: satyr -- too educated a reference for everyday American idiom. Frisky animals in English? Common and low-class: "horn dog" or dated: "randy goat". Admiring French ajectival phrase "The Great Seducer". American, Clinton-years reference: "has a zipper problem". Looking at DSK's personal appearance, tempting to reflect on Kissinger's "Power is the greatest aphrodisiac!" What country does DSK wish this had happened in? Italy!

I grabbed the last copy of Le Canard Enchainé at my news-stand yesterday to see what France's premier satirical paper had to say about the Affair. Here are some sample headlines and clips: "Erection, piège a cons!"Les larmes de Sarko-codile". Cartoon on Sarko's UMP party's real reaction to the news: "We should respect a decent period of reserve (with regard to DSK news). At least until the champagne cools!" Week's featured quote: Bernard Henri-Lévy (rather pretentious media-philosopher), we have these too in the US but none of the mainstream public has heard of them. When was the last time somebody outside academia cared what Noam Chomsky had to say about current events? "Do you think for one moment I would be friends with this man if he was a sexual predator?" "Canard Enchainé" response: "Imagine that DSK's lawyer forgot to present this argument to the American judge.

A Day in the Life of Nathalie Mason-Fleury

2011-01-15T01:16:00.001-08:00

Move over Juliet de Baubigny

In the midst of an immensely glamorous life where every minor acquaintance is some headlining Nobel Laureate, Titan of Industry, Famous Statesperson,

I’ve currently been stood up by my nemesis, Juan el Mecanico, who did NOT show up from 2-5pm to fix the currently broken blinds/washing machine/stove top. The scoundrel then had the gall to show up on another random day, fix absolutely nothing and charge me 300 euros.

I will take a moment to answer the question people most frequently ask me: “Nathalie, how DO you do it all?”

”Mamaaa….leche! Mamaaa….caca!”

What can I say, it’s the basic challenge facing every modern woman: how to balance a challenging career, personal and family time, with meaningful volunteer work. In my case, I try to make the world a better place through my foundation for rehabilitating the images of People Who Have Fallen Victim to Reality TV.

CV

In Delta Force, I received Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger and Special Forces training. Following distinguished military service, hired as senior operative with the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Weapons and Tactics unit and the Central Intelligence Agency as a case officer in the clandestine service, before joining the Counter Terrorist Unit…Proficiency with firearms, explosives, electronic devices, especially resistant to torture, fluent in Spanish, Serbian, Russian and Arabic, can pilot airplanes and helicopters.

Do I really need one of those to go to the grocery store, cook, scavenger hunt for the latest “must-bring” item at my kids schools, and clean up dog mess?

Exercise

Get up at 5:30 am. Run 10 miles.

Get up as late as I can get away with and still get kids to school-bus on time. “Me time” consists of briefly thinking about working out, before deciding I would rather read update from “Tom and Lorenzo” on Mad Men style. “In this episode Joan is wearing purple. Remember purple is her “vulnerable” color.”

Diet

Nutritious breakfast of egg-white omelet, sliced peppers and decaf coffee with sweetener and soy milk.

Lapsang Souchong tea, milk, 2 teaspoons sugar—cereal out of the box. On special mornings, pancakes and BACON!

Fashion

It’s there every week in the “best-dressed” pages.

The same non-cute, non-matching workout clothes I did not go to yoga, pilates, krav maga or running in.

Beauty

Ladies is it really my fault if your husbands can’t keep their eyes off my BJ-lips and gravity-defying tits?

If I ever had to compose a personal ad for the London Review of Books, it would run something like this: “She liked to think of herself as a MILF. The reality was closer to ‘under-40 (barely), multi-parous woman, with slight tendency to the plumpy side’ ”.

Organization Tips

See my patented spreadsheets covering every potential situation from “What to do if you find yourself accidentally wearing the same dress as Jennifer Aniston to the Oscars” to “How to handle a hostage situation.”

If it’s really important, they’ll call or email again, right?

Quality Time with the Offspring

Little Prudence and Prince are so cute when they play together.

I’m wearing ear-plugs and hiding from them right now.

The School of Life

2010-09-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

This week and next are back-to-school weeks for my children. They are spread out between two different schools. While the children haven’t changed schools, they have moved to different campuses—in both cases much larger ones. For me this means figuring out new areas of town, new buildings, new bus routes and stops, plus the usual parents’ meetings and the inevitable checklist/scavenger hunt for the items requested by their teachers.

My daughter, especially, is apprehensive about beginning middle school. She went from an elementary campus with two classes per grade to a preschool-through-12th grade facility with 5000 students. Last year she was one of 25 kids in “Valerie” ‘s class. This year, there are 11 homeroom classes in her grade and hers is simply designated by a letter and a number.

I asked her how the first day of school was. It seems she spends a lot of time trying not to get lost. She likes the novelty of having an electronic photo ID for the cafeteria and being able to choose what she eats, she says two out of her 6 teachers seem nice, one teacher is particularly concerned that the children display appropriate manners and respect for authority (which is fine by me, but the form this takes seems excessive to her), another teacher has berated her for fanning herself during class (it is very hot in Spain in September and none of the children’s schools has air conditioning—fans in Spain are a common and useful accessory for women), she describes being separated from friends by a plume of pushy 8th graders on the courtyard. I mentally picture the courtyard in “Prison Break”.

Already I have failed her. I rented her school books from the parents’ association, but did not pay attention to the last-call date for sign up and payment. Because I signed up late I could not pick up the books until the last day when half the books were missing and many of the ones left were in pretty sorry condition. She says her teachers will berate her for not being prepared and not taking care of her school material. Even though the parents’ association lady assures me the teachers are used to this situation and understanding, my daughter doesn’t believe it. I tend to agree with her. I remember my own experiences with secondary school teachers, especially those that reigned like absolute monarchs over their classrooms. Such teachers could be arbitrary and cruel.

One such pedagogue was my fourth grade parochial school teacher. Mr. G. was not unusual in arranging his students’ desks in alphabetical order; he was unusual in that he called his students by their last name. There was no Mr. or Miss in front of it either—simply “Mason” barked out military style, generally in a tone of voice indicating strong disapproval. Mr. G had military affectations—no doubt adopted to inspire terror in and consolidate his power over the child. Only now, as an adult, can I see how unsuited he would have been to any military environment involving interaction with grown-up peers or superiors.

These were the days when nobody seemed to care about children’s fragile egos. When I asked him once about a C grade I received on a science project, he responded with—“Oh, you’re the one who turned in that piece of crap.” If you had any particularity, you had better hide it from the watchful eye of Mr. G. One of his favorite sports was singling out those children for special humiliation. I remember one girl in our class who blushed easily. Mr. G used to stand her up in front of the class and he see how long it would take her to blush. The highlight of Mr. G’s year was a spring project he called “Real Life.” He introduced “Real Life” with gusto: “Now kiddies, you may think life is coming home from school and having your Mommy fix you cupcakes. Well I can assure you, it’s not. What we’re going to learn about next is ‘real life’.” He then explained that our project was to assume that we were getting out as enlisted personnel from the military and that we had no special job skills. We had to look at the want ads in the newspaper and find a job and apartment.”

Even now I have nightmares that I am back in middle or high school and the bell has rung for class and I can’t find the right classroom, or I get to the classroom and everybody else has started a test and I cannot even begin to answer the first question. I remember desperately looking for the familiar face of a friend amid the sea of people in the cafeteria. I remember the excitement of that special Friday in the month that would be “little round pizza day”. I remember the official rules—there is an honor code where you are obligated to report any transgression of your peers and I remember the unofficial rules—people cheat, they often get away with it, if you turn in your peers you might as well move to another school in another state because your name will be social poison. Your teacher may be a cruel, sadistic tyrant but God forbid you go above their head and complain about them to the administration or, worse yet, ask your parents to do this. Maybe receiving negative grades on their papers (according to a system where a certain number of points are deducted for every transgression against English grammar and composition—thus the end game is limitless) is not very morale enhancing for children, but getting the class lecture afterwards about “how little we respect certain students who must not be named who go whining to authority to complain about their teachers” is worse. Oh and those school elementary school projects, those aren’t projects for the children. Those are contests for the parents…not to mention the little girl who will dig up her dead and buried dog and label its bones in order to win an elementary school science fair, that’s the kind of person who will do anything to get ahead later in life.

Like most people, I had some truly wonderful teachers who believed in and nurtured my potential. I had others who prepared me for “real life”…

US Memorial Day, American and European approaches to patriotism

2010-06-01T07:27:00.001-07:00

My children asked me what Memorial Day commemorates. Like many Americans of my generation I never gave Memorial Day much thought beyond associating it with a day off work, barbecues and the beginning of summer. While I had a feeling it had something to do with honoring Americans who had died in wars, I didn’t know the exact answer so I looked it up in Wikipedia, where I learned that it was

« First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War – it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the Civil War – it was extended after World War I to honor Americans who have died in all wars. »

The Civil War origin is interesting because, for Americans, this was the most devastating war we have ever fought in terms of American casualties ; the only war since American Independence to have been fought on our own soil and the only war to have significantly impacted American civilians.

I was touched to see many of my American friends on Facebook post pictures of tombstones of their parents or grandparents who had served in the US Armed Forces, kind of exotic too because, in Europe, I have not detected much patriotism or pride in military service among anybody of my generation (children of the Baby Boom). I wonder if this does not have to do with the shadow cast by World War I, World War II or the Spanish Civil War (not to mention the relatively recent independence struggles of many former European colonies). In my children’s British school, two of their required reading books have been about the Blitz and I spent yesterday evening helping my fifth-grade daughter study for a history test on World War I—and was struck by the total of 9 million dead.

I remember an argument with an American boss who was very critical of France’s quick surrender during WWII. I responded that I don’t think they had much will to fight after World War I. Contrary to Germany, the major WWI battles were fought on their own soil. My grandfather, who fought for France in WWII, spent most of the War in German prisoner of war camps, which got progressively worse each time he escaped, marking a progressive descent into Hell. In a perverse way he did not resent the Germans, despite the inhumane living conditions and sadistic practices of the guards in Rawa-Ruska camp in the Ukraine. He felt that they were « just doing their job », whereas he reserved his true ire for his fellow Frenchmen and prisoners of war for their lack of will to fight, for not trying to escape from the POW camps and most of all for turning him in every time he escaped, resulting in various punishments ranging from solitary confinement to having his eye lashes burned off. The most psychologically damaging element of this experience came from witnessing the treatment of people who were far worse off than he. This came about when he and fellow Belgian and French POWs were used to unload train cars, filled with the near-dead occupants being shipped to a nearby concentration camp.

The war ended, my grandfather married my grandmother and they moved to the US, but the memories of his POW experience stayed with him. My uncles describe how he would toss cigarette cartons to the prisoners working along the road in chain gangs in the Rural South of the 1950s. Having been a prisoner himself, he sympathized and knew that cigarettes are their universal currency. My maternal grandfather loved his adopted homeland (he had to reaquire American nationalilty even though his father was American, because he had spent most his life in France and served in the French army during WWII). He became quite the patriotic citizen, inspiring his two older sons to volunteer for military service during the Vietnam war.

To the extent that my grandfather chose to leave France after WWII and immigrate to America and had very ambivalent feelings about his experiences in the French army during WWII, I can see why my experience of patriotism differ drastically from European counterparts whose grandparents lived through World War II or Spanish counterparts, whose grandparents grew up in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

The European Union has always felt like a pragmatic union to me. Pragmatism works great when « the rising tide is lifting all ships » but is a hard rallying cry in tough times when people are asked to make sacrifices. Then it gets all to easy to focus on differences and who is not « sacrificing enough ».

It has always seemed to me that nationalistic identification with any one of the European countries is something you are or aren’t born into. It has to do with the fact that your ancestors lived in the same place for many hundreds of years, alongside other people who share a common culture and ethnicity (Although this is changing with more recent waves of immigration…)—a real challenge when you try to build a union among countries, who were fighting each other and themselves 70 and 80 years ago.

As far as a pan-European « identity » among people my age, if it exists, I’d be hardpressed to define it. Patriotism is seen as sort of an embarrassing relic of and painful memory from their grandparents’ generations. The social welfare mentality leads to a lot entitlement regarding what the state should be giving them, but (like many of their generational American counterparts) not so much interest when it comes to giving back. Compulsory military service has mostly been abolished and I don’t see any real respect for voluntary military service here—the general idea seems to be that if you are smart, you choose to earn a lot more money in the private sector. On the other hand, in Europe, going into politics and public administration is seen as a more prestigious career choice than in the US…

One way I do not see a major difference with Europe is my (Gen X) and the following, Boomlet (1980 and later), US generations’ tendency to feel like JFK’s « Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country » failed, along with a lot of the other social ideals of the 1960s—and to full-heartedly embrace a much more 1980s Boomer ethos of individualism and consumerism. However, when I see the Memorial Day Facebook posts I can’t help but wonder if the US, as a much younger country whose inhabitants may or may not share a common ethnicity or past cultural heritage, does benefit from the fact that we have a national identity that is based on choosing and being taught to reaffirm a common set of values. As for the economic crisis, having a strong, federal government definitely makes it easier for the US--a federal government whose structure and integrity we had to fight a Civil War to preserve…so all in all, interesting for me to learn that the origin of Memorial Day was US reunification.

Facebook "friendbore"?

2010-05-14T11:23:00.001-07:00

It could be you!

As a frequent offender in this category, and parent of a 'tween child and all the drama that entails, I was telling my husband how schools, or preferably parents, ought to introduce their children to the finer points of "How Not to be a Cad on the Internet".

My husband said: That makes me think of something. I used to have 405 Facebook friends two days ago and today I only have 403.

Maybe they really weren't your "friends" in the first place.

Yeah, but to get unfriend-ed by two people in the space of two days?

Well, didn't you accidentally befriend that person who mortally betrayed us in business because you used the Facebook Email Addresses Ap (and you had forgotten they were still there)? They agreed to friend you and then you "unfriended" them within a space of minutes. That was pretty cold.

(Distracted) I'm still wondering what I might have done recently.

Maybe you're one of "those" people.

What people?

"Friedbores," you know the number one most boring person in your Facebook "news" page. The one whose posting frequency is only matched by the inanity of their subject matter.

Noooh!

Who knows. Maybe you tweeted a few floaters recently and that was it. Problem solved, instant erasure! And like that, you're gone.

Of course, I only thought about this because I worried that the same thing was going to happen to me after a few of my status updates...

Ah the age of technology, when you can go from friendwhore to friendbore in a matter of seconds.

Keep the "crazy" under control

2010-04-26T03:54:00.001-07:00

I have an (almost) eleven-year old girl and three boys, twins aged 7 and a 3-yr old. Honestly, most the time, I feel like Lynette from Desperate Housewives. Hearing my 3-yr old son sing “I love my mudder” at breakfast in the morning or the evening cuddle and prayers with the children—the one moment of the day when they resemble anything close to angelic--are all too brief. Mostly my day is like this:

Go onto the Internet to see if the crusty raised bumps in a circle on Twin A’s arm are ringworm. Educate myself on what ringworm is and how do you get rid of this. It turns out ringworm is a fungus and an over-the-counter antifungal cream at the pharmacy will take care of this. Of course you have to remember to put it on every morning and night for about 2 weeks to get results, in the meantime, he’s developed a new “ringworm” on his leg. Crap! More weeks of remembering to put the ringworm cream on Twin A, especially now that we are in later Spring, and I have to remember to put sunscreen on my fair-skinned children’s faces, arms and necks every morning.

Two years ago, when I had to take my daughter to the dermatologist to get rid of some pesky warts (that cream had to be applied morning and night for two months!), the posters of little baby with wrinkled granny face and melanomas or the toddler walking on the beach in swim trunks—with a header like “That tan he got at the beach when he was two is something he’ll keep with him for the rest of his life” made a real impression on me. The dermatologist explained to me that the “freckles” on the kids arms and faces are sun damage. My half-Spanish husband thinks my sunscreen obsession is complete horseshit. His mother and sister have never used a drop of sunscreen in their life and laugh about the British tourists in Mallorca—“Look, they come in two colors: Just arrived and just burned!” I would have loved it if our children had come out with more of a Mediterranean complexion, but considering three of them are as Melanin-deprived as I am, there must be some recessive fair skinned Galician Celt or Vosgeian French genes in the woodpile from his side of the family—so I wish he would be more supportive.

Back to the Internet to do more research, this time on impacted splinters. The 3-yr old got a splinter 6 weeks ago and I don’t think we got all the wood out. Meanwhile, he has a thick callous with a pinprick-sized hole on the bottom of his foot. The suggested remedies run the gamut from “put a piece of bacon on this under a Bandaid and leave it overnight. In the morning it will come out.” To a recommended intervention, cutting the callous out with a sterilized exacto knife. A lot of input from professional carpenters on the different reactions you get based on different types of wood splinters. None of this seems relevant or within my skillset. I talk to my husband about the splinter and the fact that my hairdresser almost died from a staph aurea infection he got in his foot and I guess I should probably call the pediatrician to get it out and he says: “You’re not seriously going to bother the pediatrician to remove a splinter. I had a splinter once for three years.” I retort: “You’ll regret this lack of concern when the baby gets deadly ill with a staph infection,” to which he replies: “Do me a favor keep the crazy under control.” Wickedly, I think how low I can go to win the argument: “How do you know you’re not crazy. I mean, truly crazy people never think they are?”

Why Can’t I be More Like…?

Alpha Catholic Mom: The woman at mass with her six beautifully behaved, children in coordinating outfits, politely listening to the sermon. This is the woman with the beautiful embroidered First Communion banner that looks like it was handmade by Belgian nuns, but of course she did it herself, not to mention she’s actually got her hair-brushed and looks well put-together, herself. Meanwhile, I’ve pulled my wet hair back because I haven’t had time to dry it, have screamed at the children three times that morning to get them dressed and out the door to church on-time, overcome the challenge of getting them past my anti-clerical, unreligious husband who asks them if they’d rather play video games Sunday Morning than talk to “Dear Baby Jesus”—ensues “Talladega Nights” Ricky Bobby impersonation. Once in church, my daughter gets up once to go to the bathroom, the boys making paper airplanes out of the hand-outs, tell me they’re thirsty and ask when it will be over at various points.

Or

The Stepford Wife. The Stepford Wife is tall blond, slender and attractive. It would be easy to hate her, but she is also smart, has a cool sense of self-deprecating humor, and is absolutely nice to everybody. The Stepford Wife is very stylish. I bet she never spend the whole day in work out clothes…and then doesn’t even work out. She may have 3 or more children, but they do not seem to stress her out overly much. I never hear her complaining about the children, or if they do, it’s in a light-hearted way. I bet the Stepford Wife is never riding in a minivan (she’d rather be seen dead) and turns to her children who are fighting in the back seat and says something like: “If you don’t stop fighting with your brother right now, I will a) take away your TV and video-gaming privileges for the week b) no dessert or sugary snacks today c) I will slap you! The Stepford Wife is still pinching herself to verify her good luck at being married to her husband—the dear man. I’m sure she’s never screamed at him with vocabulary that would shame a fishwife from the top of a ski slope or had conversations that revolve around whose turn it is to clean up the dog vomit. My husband wonders a la “Jesse’s Girl:” “Why can’t I find a wife like that!”

I think of a Facebook cartoon that somebody once posted:

Male Prostitute (for women!)

You see a housewife driving by in a stationwagon and a man soliciting her: “For $50 I’ll listen to you all night.” Ha, ha, funny in a disturbing way, because it’s so true. The retort would be the old saw about:

The Woman Who Goes to a Fairy Godmother

…and says: “I don’t want to cook any more; I don’t want to grocery shop; I don’t want to be the one who always has to remember the children’s schedules and drive them to doctors, dentists, birthday parties any more, I don’t want to do the dishes or clean house, I want more pay for the same work…” And then the fairy godmother waved her magic arm and the woman turned into a man.

Like everything, this is a gross over-simplification, because I have other Facebook friends who are stay at home dads, who do every task I listed in the fairy godmother joke and others who clearly are doing a lot to participate in running the house and looking after the kids. I think the difference is being the person who has to organize everything in their head and make sure it gets done, even if other people are helping out and the person who can check out of most these responsibilities, confident that everything to run the household and take care of the children will get done, and if you have something to do, someone will remind you to do it, so you can whole-mindedly devote yourself to some creative or professional endeavor for hours at end without having to stop and write a post-it-note saying something like:

“Remember to call the orthodontist” because the dog ate the daughter’s retainer. “Call the drycleaners and schedule a pick-up”. The clothes are piling up and you need to make sure they haven’t fired you as a client because you can never be there in the exact moment in the 4 hour time window they actually show up to pick up the clothes, “Buy birthday present for Twin B’s friend.”

I finally decided to be “cool mom,” which means buying other children the toys they want, but you wouldn’t think of buying for your own children--for very good reason. I was interrupted from whatever I was doing this weekend by Twin B hyperventilating and wailing like a stuck pig because he had taken down the Lego creator set I bought for his best friends’ birthday party from it’s high, safe perch to “look at it.” Then, his baby brother found it and wreaked destruction. Now, for the uninitiated, Lego Creator is your basic parental nightmare. It is a creative toy and if Twin B ever goes to Caltech or MIT, I can feel a touch of pride that he ultimately, inadvertently got the Lego Creator set he always wanted. Why do I hate Lego Creator? It is because the sets come with a quadrillion tiny, unique pieces that a) your child loses within minutes b) the baby brother steals c) the dog eats (hopefully you don’t have take the dog to the vet for the $1000 operation to unblock his intestinal tract afterwards—thankfully baby brother is 3 now and doesn’t try to eat the tiny pieces)…and then you child comes wailing to you: “Waaaaaaaaaah, I cannot build General Grievous because I’m missing blah, blah (miniscule and indescribable) connector piece.”

Deep Thought: Since when do first graders have 2 hours of homework on the weekends? That is such a drag to supervise. It’s like your 38 and back in school. When I was a kid I didn’t have real homework until third grade; I didn’t put any serious effort into “remembering” to do it until fifth grade; and my parents role was limited to occasionally asking if I had done my homework.

These days when your first-grader has homework: “It’s your homework!” Of course you could leave it to the child to take initiative (at age 7) and remember to do it himself—which if you have a normal child--you can forget about. Take into account, that everybody else’s parent is helping them with their homework, so if you just left it up to the child to “learn a lesson in responsibility”—the teacher is clearly going to think your kid is a loser, with slacker, loser parents who will be really sorry when their child graduates from high school without even being able to get into community college.

Mother-of-Four Children-Under-the-Age-of-12 Fantasy

Sleep away Obedience Camp for Children: I see this as a sort of military themed spend-the-night camp run by former army sergeants, with beneficial activities like 6 AM forced marches and runs to wear the little buggers out, and other group activities to teach them the value of team work and discourage whining tendencies. If only there was a place where you could send your kids off for a month and have them shipped back to you as responsible, considerate, self-motivated, empathetic human beings—future responsible citizens, progeny who will do you proud! This is no doubt a Heinlein “Starship Troopers”-inspired fantasy that highlights my inner, Southern conservative, militarist streak.

Thoughts on Health Care--In Between the Extremes

2010-03-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been following the recent health care debate very closely, but I’m glad that Health Care Reform has passed. I find it disingenuous that so many staunch Republicans complain about “the way it was passed” considering their tactics, since the Clinton years, of filibustering everything...and then complaining about how things are not done with more consensus.

Living abroad, I am often treated to people’s uninformed opinions about the way “they”—we Americans--all are—overweight, ignorant, gun-toting, polluting, violators of other countries’ national sovereignty--extremists. What is most amusing, or distressing is the way people have of saying these things in front of you, as if you weren’t one of Them and might be insulted or disagree with your interlocutors. It’s not that there isn’t any truth in any of these assertions, it’s that such statements often reflect uninformed (or minimally informed) truth, issued from a very smug outsider perspective.

Let’s take the least polarizing and most personal accusation: “Americans are fat.” Maybe it’s our Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, but if we have something negative to say about other people, minimal good manners dictate not saying this until “They” are at least out of ear’s reach. I was once told by an otherwise educated-seeming, middle-class French person that “Americans do not eat vegetables.” “Really, I said, have you ever been in the PRODUCE section of a Publix or a Safeway because they happen to be loaded with vegetables, which would be surprising if there was no market for them…”

Sometimes when people do travel abroad, a very curious thing happens: they have preconceived stereotypes of the “other” place they will be visiting (preferably exotic and different from their place, otherwise what’s the interest of traveling), so the purpose of the trip is to confirm these preconceived notions. The international traveler, with such an agenda, can be surprisingly successful. The person who is convinced that the US is a violent and lawless place will inevitably walk into a random Burger King in Los Angeles and witness a shootout. Meanwhile I, the American, have been to Burger King and other fast food joints in my life (and no I don’t and didn’t eat this food on a regular basis) and have never witnessed one gun or shooting.

I don’t know where this foreign visitor went (I’m not familiar with LA), but I assume it was a bad neighborhood. It wouldn’t occur to me to wander around the rougher Parisian “banlieues” (suburbs) as a blithe tourist. And, if I did such a thing, I would be honest enough to qualify where I was instead of identifying this as the “quintessential French experience.” As for the weight issue, I do recognize and am saddened by the fact that, statistically Americans are overweight. However, the conversation is more interesting when people say something like—“weight and making healthy food choices are often a function of education and economics, and weight gain typically accompanies the rise of processed foods and the practice of working outside the house. Society-wide weight gain, while at a more advanced stage in the US, is a phenomenon currently affecting Most developed nations…”

Now back to social security and health care. I am always surprised to hear so many Americans proclaim: “We have the best health care system in the world.” Most of these people have never lived Anywhere Else in the world. They often rely on statistics and articles that support how bad it is Everywhere Else. This is no substitute for actually having lived Somewhere Else and being able to compare.

I am not a statistics person, and I don’t have any political agenda. These are some simple points that have impressed me living both in the US and abroad:

Spain—

We have private health care insurance here that was very easy to sign up for. The only reason its cost is comparable to private (non-employer affiliated) PPO health insurance in the US is because it is a world-wide policy and will reimburse us 80% of any health care expenses incurred elsewhere, but what makes it expensive is the US portion of the coverage….If this policy were limited to Spain, it would be a Whole Lot cheaper. To obtain this policy, I did not have to fill out any questionnaire on pre-existing conditions or list all the medical or hospital visits my family have had in the past five years.

When my children are sick and I go to the children’s emergency room, I give the receptionist my insurance card and my child’s name—punto y basta. I do not need to call up the insurance company to get any approvals if the emergency room doctor recommends the child stay in the hospital.

My children’s pediatrician gives me his cell phone number That He Will Answer and will visit our house (non-emergency house visits by non-network providers are reimbursed up to 80% by the health insurance) when the children are sick.

I haven’t tried this, but my American friends have. You can also get a family practice doctor to visit you at your house if you are sick and don’t feel well enough to go outside. They said the cost of this was around 100 euros and also reimbursable at 80% by their insurance.

We are not eligible for Seguridad Social (social security) because we do not work for a salary in Spain. Illegal immigrants are, however, eligible for Seguridad Social. They are given a card and affiliated doctor and hospitals and can use the system for non-emergency related health-care. Most Spanish people I know, who can afford it, have private health care insurance, either through their employer or for which they pay, privately.

Yes, they all complain about Seguridad Social—the waits and the difficulty of seeing a specialist or getting very individualized attention, but the key point is that it is there. I am sympathetic to the Spaniards’ complaints about Seguridad Social, not so much to the complaints from illegal and recently legalized immigrants. I don’t say it, but what I am thinking is: “You come from a country that could care less if you die in the street like a dog. So no, I don’t give a damn if you had to wait a long time in line behind a bunch of old Spaniards to get your health care. Those people have been paying into this system for years…Suck it up and be grateful for what you get because in my country, nobody gives you shit for free.”

US

Most aspects of healthcare visits take place with the nurses. Any contact with the doctor is very brief. Some practices have an emergency call number where you will first talk with a call center employee or a nurse. If they deem it necessary, a doctor may call you back.

Any stay in the hospital involves and lengthy and often complex pre-approval process with the insurer. You want to make sure you correctly understood this process or you may get stuck with the bill.

If you are checking into the hospital or need to go to the emergency room and are not spewing blood on the spot (in which case the friend or family member who brought you will be doing this), expect to spend 45 minutes just filling out forms explaining who your Primary and Secondary insurers are and all their contact information and absolving the hospital and its personnel of all blame if they should accidentally feed you into a wood chipper and cut you to a million pieces. If you have insurance, expect a bill that can range from the hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on your co-pay and deductible. If you do not have insurance and should need emergency hospitalization and advanced medical care in the US, you can wind up with a bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. To add insult to injury, there is one last step. You must then interact with their “patient care consultant” to “make sure that your hospital processing is going as smoothly as possible.”

Getting Health Insurance when you are self-employed

If you do not have access to insurance through an employer or professional organization, expect to fill out a very lengthy questionnaire and answer questions about every doctor’s visit, hospital-visit and surgical procedure every person in your family has had in the past five years. If they deem that you are too high-risk, they can refuse to insure you and you will find yourself without insurance in the country with the highest cost of health care in the world (see above for the hundred thousand dollar bill).

When we were just starting JBoss, we had family health coverage through my former employer’s COBRA insurance (much higher than what we paid when this was subsidized by my employer—probably about $900 a month for two adults and a child). Three months away from end of the 18-month obligatory COBRA coverage period, I decided to shop around for a health plan that would cover our small company (just my husband and myself at that point). In the meantime, I became pregnant with twins (and no, this was not the result of any fertility treatments for you crack-pots that think that this was interfering with God’s Plan). I was not just a pregnant woman, I was a pregnant woman with twins, which put me into the High Risk pregnancy category because twins are very often born early and can require very expensive NICU (newborn intensive care unit) hospitalization for a few days to several weeks. The insurance broker was doubtful about finding anybody who would cover us.

At that point, I wondered where I had gone wrong in life. I had gotten a higher education; I worked hard. I considered myself a responsible person, I hadn’t even really waited to the last minute to obtain new insurance coverage and here I was--at risk for falling through the (in the US, practically non-existent) mattress that cushions your fall to the bottom of society—potentially with no health insurance or exorbitantly priced health insurance and the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical debt. Things worked out for the best and we did find an HMO program that would accept us and the twins were born at a healthy 8 months, with only one of them requiring a two-day stay at NICU…but there were no guarantees things would turn out this way.

I consider the US to be a very favorable place to become an entrepreneur. Until recently, this did not apply to anybody who (they or their immediate family members) may have an existing medical condition that makes you undesirable to private health care insurers. I know talented people who could not ever work for small start-ups for this reason.

The procedure

This is how the free-market health care system works. Two years ago, I had to have a medically necessary procedure. I had private PPO insurance for which we paid quite a bit, I was sure this wasn’t going to be a problem. The first thing I learned is that Those Doctors Who Can Afford It—which is often to say the good ones—do not choose to affiliate with Cigna or Aetna or Blue Cross or whoever your “premium” health insurance provider is. These doctors may not necessarily have gone to medical school and become surgeons just so they could be driving Maseratis and living in multi-million dollar houses. On the other hand, they want do not want a health insurance bureaucrat, who is not a doctor, telling them how much they can charge or dictating what kind of treatment they should be giving to their patients.

The procedure was quite expensive and Cigna paid for far less than 80% of it. When you sign a contract with a US health insurance provider, what that “80% out of network coverage” really means is that they will pay "80% of what they think your procedure should have cost” out of network. Expect to get lots of bills later down the road from the doctor and hospital when they get lesser reimbursement. What I learned? Cigna and I’m sure they are not the only health insurance company that does this, automatically doesn’t pay a chunk of your bill—on principle. I don’t know what the statistics are on this, but I’m sure 50 to 60% people will stop there and not appeal. If you are successful in your appeal, as I was, at that point they will pay half of what they didn’t pay before, but still a lot less than the 80% you were counting on. Maybe more intrepid people successfully go on to a second appeal; I stopped there.

If you think that a lot of doctors don’t want to affiliate with your health insurance carrier, guess what? Many of the good ones, or at least the ones who seemed to have taken the “bedside manner” course in medical school—Really don’t want to affiliate with Medicare…which you will find out if you happen to have parents.

If you need private health insurance and have had any surgery in the past few years for something they considered a risk, even if whatever they operated for turned out to be benign—expect to automatically be denied health coverage.

So don’t tell me that health care reform is going to “break” our marvelous system. As far as I’m concerned—it isn’t exactly that marvelous and it’s already broken….Yes, I know that other systems aren’t perfect and have their faults as well and that there are a million different technical points you can argue. However, considering that the current free-market American system does not provide all my family members with health coverage, and, for most of my life, I was in the position of this being a Major Problem, I’m going to suck it up pay for this.

For all of you people whingeing about the way this bill was passed, you know what? The rest of us are stuck paying for the Iraq war, which we entered under false pretenses, and the ongoing Afghanistan war, which looks like it’s going to be another Vietnam. We’re stuck paying for the bail-out of the financial system, when most of us had nothing to do with the abuses or obscene payouts going on there…so welcome to our world.

The Reluctant Skiier--Part II "Le Club"

2010-03-19T03:54:00.001-07:00

So many of our friends raved about their vacations at Le Club, that we had to try it out. First of all, an important distinction: there are two kinds of Club Meds. The swinging singles type—“Gala Swinga” memorialized in the cult French movies “Les Bronzes” (the tan ones) and “Les Bronzes font du Ski” (The Tan ones go skiing) and the family club med (basically like an all-in-one-vacation with built-in day-camp for your children). Note: Family Club Med is Not the place to meet somebody unless you are a GO, a GM in the market for nice divorcé/es with two or three children, or the teenage children of a GM.

Both versions of Le Club have their own lingo, which seems contrived to my American sensibilities (and hey, we’re the people who gave the world Disney)…or maybe it’s because interacting with complete strangers in a vacation camp environment is not my experience of what the French generally like to do; however, considering Le Club is a cultural phenomenon in France, it must respond to some something they like. The main vocabulary you need to know is that the members are called GM (“gentil membres”, nice members) and the counselors (for lack of better translation) are called GO (gentils organisateurs). The head of the vacation village is called the “Chef de Village”—village chief. The club features dress theme nights and a musical every night after dinner (performed by the GOs). At Family Club, the musical the last evening stars Your Kids.

The genius of Singles Club Med hardly merits explaining. It is perfectly captured in the Gala Swinga theme song from “Les Bronzes” (“Bienvenue a Gala Swinga, il ya du soleil et des nanas, on va s’en fourrer jusque la…” Welcome to Gala Swinga, there is sun and there are chicks, we’re going to stuff ourselves up to here…” This is a parody of the actual club med theme song, which the GMs are invited to sing and line dance to in the evenings after the musical or in the disco. You wouldn’t think grown adults, perfect strangers up until a few days earlier, would want to break into a hokey camp-type song and dance, but a couple of potent “free” cocktails at the club Med bar, and the ambiance of the Club Med Disco can change your perspective there.

The genius of Family Club Med is the realization that vacation with Your Kids, is not always a vacation. This is even more true with a family ski vacation, where the convenience of an all-included formula for ski lift tickets, hotel, meals, entertainment, adult- and kids-group ski classes and onsite equipment rental are a real selling point. You drop your kids off at Le Mini-Club at 8:30 am and don’t need to pick them up until 5 in the evening. Two hours later, you can also drop them off for dinner and after-dinner activities with their friends.

La Bouffe

There is a hierarchy of Club Meds, ranging from 3 to 5 tridents and the meals are all served buffet style, with many options to choose from (including a hamburger, fries, pizza and pasta kids buffet). The French habitués complain that the quality of the food has declined in recent years. The quality does vary according to the individual dishes. I'm not a big fan of their sushi or the buttered??? bacon at breakfast - habitually undercooked slabs of congealed fat. However to your Anglo-Saxon palate (see kids’ buffet), an après-ski snack of oysters and champagne, and foie gras at dinner is a tremendous improvement over cheesy fries. The cheese, for that matter, tends to be melting slabs of Raclette. To the uninitiated, this might smell like fermented gym sock; however after a long day skiing, accompanying potatoes and viande des grisons, it tastes like Heaven. Another note: Unless your are gifted with super-human self-control, reminiscent of Jane Fonda in her anorexic period, Le Club is not the place to go to lose weight.

Another word about dinner: as an American, packing for a ski trip, features two types of clothing—items made with lycra and items made with polartec. At Le Club, French women still dress for dinner, so unless you want to be stuck recycling your one good blouse and sweater over yoga pants like I did every night, pack a few nicer things.

Les Francais

The biggest shock, as an American in French ski resorts, is the different cultural perception about waiting in line. For the American, the ability to form an orderly line and wait your turn is a Basic Underpinning of Society. The French very simply don’t like to do this and don’t consider it rude to cut in front of you. This seems to cut across all social classes. A good friend of mine, whom I consider the epitome of BCBG (bon chic bon genre) manners and elegance told me that from an early age she was socialized into this practice by her very proper mother: “Now you go ahead of me and cut. Nobody will say anything because you’re a child, and then I’ll slip in.” This can only end in frustration. Since Anglo-Saxon good manners consist in being pathologically non-confrontational, I was reduced to seething in silence as everybody nonchalantly cut in front of me to drop off their children at Mini-Club or in the ski line.

My half-French, half-Spanish husband has no such compunctions. When women cut in front of him at the Mini-Club, he tapped them on the shoulder and pointed out: “Excuse me, Madam, but I am in front of you, as is this gentleman over here and that woman over there.” He even got into an altercation with an elderly, handicapped woman. The Anglo-Saxon perspective would be that advanced age and physical infirmity automatically confer a halo of goodness, worthy of respect. The French aren’t past admitting that these conditions occasionally coincide with your basic cantankerous, trouble-making old acid-vat.

Marc at Club Med

Grandmother-aged woman on crutches cuts in front of Marc in the après-ski buffet line.

Marc: Excuse me, Madam, but I was in front of you.
Older Woman: I’m handicapped.
Marc: Well, I have four children

Woman watches in horror as Marc starts to generously fill his plate with the remaining merguez sausages.

Older Woman: Il y en a qui se servent comme des porcs. (Some people help themselves like pigs.)

Marc: You’re rude. Calm down, there’ll be enough for everyone.

The next day, Marc is having lunch with his ski group and tells them the story of his altercation with the “vielle peau” (old acid vat). One of the women says. That sounds like my mother.

Marc replies: That’s impossible.
Ski group companion: Oh no, it’s not. She’s handicapped. Oh look, there she is.

The acid vat approaches the lunch table and smiles wickedly at Marc.

Lessons Learned with a different kind of ski instructor

When I was seventeen, I spent a lot of time with a very dear great aunt and great uncle. The bonds of kinship--beginning with the return of Rene Madec to France from his illustrious and profitable career as a mercenary in 18th century India--in Brittany, like the American South, would take several minutes to explain. Suffice it to say that these Breton relations were “cousins a la mode de Bretagne” and referred to as Mon Oncle and Ma Tante—My Uncle and My Aunt.

Mon Oncle, while retired from his job as a lawyer, spent a lot of time traveling to Paris for various post-professional and non-profit activities. He explained to me that occasional separation was the secret to a long and happy marriage. “Otherwise, you shall have nothing to talk about but the fact that the dog is losing his hairs and Le Service is getting insolent and senile…” Mon Oncle also cautioned against the vice of gambling. “I view it this way. If I spent all my money gambling, how would I be able to afford to see les danseuses (exotic dancers)?”

Ever since my husband and I have decided to spend most our time skiing with groups or friends who share our level of ability (see The Reluctant Skiier Part One l), ski vacations have worked out a lot better for us.

Group 2’s ski instructor was definitely older, but in very good physical condition so I assumed he must be in his early sixties. As opposed to previous group ski lessons with a modus operandi of “keep up and make it down the next slope alive,” Paul spent a lot of time on calisthenics and technique. He had us balancing on one ski, hopping in the air and skiing (waltz-style) in circles with a partner, holding each other’s poles as we went down some of the easier slopes. Paul executed these pirouettes, pliés, relevés and little leaps with grace. While we barely approximated these movements, the inconceivable happened, we started to get better.

Paul also enjoyed logic (math and verbal) puzzles and complex “jeux de mots” (puns) that he would share with us as we waited in line or as he downed one of multiple glasses of wine at our one-hour lunch break. He had also recently discovered the joys of being on the receiving end of a group humor list, facilitated by the new and marvelous invention of the Internet. He shared these stories with us, as well as his opinion of the Swiss, from the point of view of a French-man who has lived there for many years (“a nation of denouncers”).

When Paul learned I was American. He said. “Oh les Americains! I remember the GIs well. They taught me to drive. I was only fourteen, but I accompanied them and they let me drive the jeeps as they were advancing through France.”

At this point, the group and I calculate, with amazement, that Paul must be 80 years old.

He has one son, of whom he is very proud, who brings him some of the finer vintages from Nestle’s private dining room for higher level executives—Chateau Petrus, Cheval Blanc, Haut Brion…

I asked Paul if he has any other children. “No, only one,” he replied. “But I have many siblings. I’m one of thirteen children.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“Well they had to repopulate France after the First World War.”

I remark that I can’t imagine how his mother did it. I find myself exhausted and over-whelmed with four children.

“Oh, it wasn’t that hard. Children weren’t as needy back then as they are today. We had a farm (can’t remember the region, somewhere in Eastern France near Nancy). When we got home from school, we all had our chores. I was in charge of the chickens, another brother was in charge of the cows, another one took care of the rabbits…”

We discuss diet. Paul is a vegetarian. He explains that growing up on a French farm in the 30s, you only ate meat once a week, the rest of the time it was legumes and vegetables. I complain of the difficulty of losing weight. Paul mentions that he managed to lose 40 kilos in the last year. I ask how he did it.

“Oh, it’s not difficult. You just stop eating for a while (ensues a description of some fast of biblical proportions and the importance of slowly returning to eating, just an apple the first day), “but make sure you continue to exercise. It’s always important to exercise, regardless of what you do.” It’s clear, that at 80, Paul is in better physical shape than anybody in our group.

After the second day of skiing I feel like hell. All the muscles in my legs hurt. I can only go down the stairs sideways.

I go to meet Paul at the start of ski group and tell him I won’t be making it that day. He looks disappointed.

“Just give it a try, your muscles will warm up.”

Sheepishly, I explain that I’m out of my medicine. I have ibuprofen (for arthritis in my hands) but can’t take it at the recommended doses unless I also buy my omeprazol stomach protector.

He looks at me in amazement. “You have to take a pill to take another pill? No wonder the pharmacists are so rich!”

He feels sorry for me. Clearly, I come from weaker stock.

Some thoughts on European vs. American attitudes towards childrearing

2010-03-17T08:26:00.001-07:00

In Spain or France, it is perfectly acceptable to outsource your children. In the US, it’s not even acceptable to admit you might (occasionally) “want” to outsource your child. In fact, if you are an American mother and haven’t breast fed your child until age three and home-schooled them for the duration of their secondary education, and aren’t out there driving yourself ragged taking your children to all kinds of enriching extra-curricular activities and tutors, muffins for mom, doughnuts for dad, volunteering to be class parent, field trip parent, co-ordinating class parties, birthday parties and playdates, completely terrorized by the possibility that you are failing to give them every advantage in life and Your Child Might Fall Behind…you’re probably falling short as a parent.

When I sent my children to an International school, I learned of such old-fashioned and quaint practices as “cocktail play-dates” -- your children play, while you nurse a drinky-poo and chat with your friends. At the end of such playdates, it might be acceptable to briefly lose your children and wonder out-loud: “I wonder where the little horrors are now?”

Then I realized I could go one step further and live Abroad and send my children to foreign schools. The first thing I noticed about school in Spain was the schools’ failure to send me a directory with the names of my children’s classmates and the contact information for their parents. Somebody explained that this would be considered an un-acceptable breach of privacy here.

When my then 6-yr old sons each made two best friends, being an intrepid American sort, I went and bought some nice “I am not a psycho” stationary and set out to writing:

“Hello, I am X’s mother. X and Y are friends. My son would be very happy to invite Y over to play some day at your convenience. Here is my contact information.”

Some of the mothers responded relatively quickly and graciously. However, others took weeks to respond and gently re-buffed me. I was crushed. I had gone out of my way to make an overture to these people and they made it clear that I was wasting their time. I did not understand. I wasn’t asking for their friendship or any real social interaction with them, I was simply looking for a way for our children (who were already friends) to play together outside school. Another friend explained to me that the idea of a play-date was completely non-existent in Spanish culture and the idea of going out of one’s way to drive across town to facilitate your child’s social life was simply preposterous.

Well my move and the lack of need to co-ordinate playdates left me with more free time. I didn’t have a job. Meanwhile, the children’s schools hadn’t sent me any notices about muffins for mom or doughnuts for dad, reminders about bringing food for friendship salads or snack weeks, or asked to help with science day or field day, so I figured I might as well do the civic thing and volunteer. Once again I sent a hand-written note to my children’s teachers in their correspondence folder…and never heard back. Only later, did a woman who had grown up in the US, and understood my confusion, explain. She told me “Oh the schools are afraid if the parents get too involved they will start telling them how to run things, so they don’t want the parents around.”

No need to worry about school fund-raising auctions, either. My sons’ school is a for-profit entity and my daughter’s school is a joint effort of France’s Education Nationale and Foreign Affairs. Her teachers have been wonderful but you can forget trying to communicate with the administration or (more likely) the secretaries in the administration. My experience of the Lycee Francais administration’s attitude towards the parents is: “The parent has the right to fuck off at any time.”

And, you know what? I’m getting used to it. I take Pilates now, I have a museum-visiting group, I take more lunches with my friends.

We hope they're good at Math...

2010-03-11T06:24:00.001-08:00

Parochial School PE and Mardi Gras in the 80s

Among my worst memories growing up, PE (physical education) at Christ the King parochial school features prominently. I am naturally clumsy with poor eye-hand coordination (and this is not in an endearing Bella Swan of Twilight kind of way). PE in the 1980s featured lots of team sports involving throwing, catching and dodging balls as well as the (now) incomprehensible practice of letting the kids pick the teams. Needless to say the team captains were always the most popular and athletic boys and girls. I remember listening to them go down the names of my classmates hoping to avoid the impossible--the humiliation of being picked last or (occasionally) second to last. By fifth grade, I discovered an escape hatch from the disapproving screams of "Way to Go Mason!" as they rolled the ball towards me in kickball...and I tripped over it, or my prayers went unanswered and the baseball came my way in the outfield. I volunteered to be the teacher's grading assistant. I couldn't believe my luck. As my class-mates tromped off to the hated PE, I stayed in the cloistered quiet of the class-room, in the all-powerful role of grader.

By high school, I attended a different school and PE had expanded to include something I was actually good at that required little grace or eye-hand coordination--running. My torment took another form--Mardi Gras--an annual play, dance and float competition among the four years of Girls High School. If you had no discernible dramatic talents and didn't happen to be pretty or popular enough to be elected float queen, you automatically got shuffled into one of the three class dances. Did I mention these dances involved costumes, usually not very flattering ones? With the exception of my Junior Year (where I escaped by going Abroad) I danced as a bat to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," a chipmunk to Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" and an "Egyptian" (I think this was to the Bangle's "Walk like an Egyptian"). Inevitably the dance captain was some bossy little girl who had been taking ballet or tap since she was two, who did not appreciate my poor execution of her steps and inability to stay on beat, thus interfering with her moment to shine.

You would think this experience would have made me sympathetic to my own children's potential to have inherited this lack of athletic ability. My husband requests that I point out that this defect does not come his side of the gene pool and that he was a very respectable athlete in his day. Nevertheless, I have decided that part of the children's education in Spain should involve their participation in a locally popular extra-curricular activity.

The Royal Conservatory

As a resourceful American woman with access to the Internet, and ideas about her daughter learning grace, deportment and discipline. I found about something called the Conservatory. Note: my daughter also took karate for many years. This was in my "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" phase when I decided "I will have a girl with skin as fair as snow, hair like spun gold, who can kick butt" (alas no Asian ancestry since Gatins' forebear Rene Madec left Quimper as a cabin boy with the French East India Company in the 18th century, had many adventures, became a Nabob and eventually married a descendant of Genghis Khan). "This girl-child will excel at school, dance like an angel and, if necessary, deliver blows like a killer." My daughter actually has rhythm and grace. She passed the auditions and now we're sucking off the teat of socialism as she learns classical ballet, Spanish dance and music theory for 6 hours a week (the hours go up after the first year), at the ridiculous cost of 120 euros a year--roughly one months's tuition, plus the cost of the recital costume in the US. One thing that is nice about state sponsorhip of the arts is that while ballet is a cliche of the aspirant middle and upper-middle class in the US, my daughter's companions at Spanish conservatory come from all walks of life. This program turns professional after 4 years and, for many of these children, it's their ticket to a career as a dancer.

Fundacion Real Madrid Futbol

Meanwhile, what could be more Spanish or even more international than "futbol" (soccer for you Americans). Nothing less than a Real Madrid youth team (haven't noticed that any girls play in the league, but didn't ask either) in a working class suburb would do for my boys' "education." My boys are average height and, while they have respectable gross motor skills, they are up against boys who started playing a lot earlier than they did. The US soccer team for their age was run by a church-league and usually coached by a parent or grand-parent, with one hour-long practice and one game a week, played at a local park or elementary school. On the other hand, the pre-benjamin (7 and under) futbol team for Fundacion Real Madrid has one and a half hour practices twice a week, professional coaches and a ginormous brand-new 10-field stadium near Barajas airport. Oh, and did I mention that they don't cancel games for weather here. Madrid is at 800 meters altitude can get quite cold and wet in the winter. I, wrongly, assumed they could wear their team sweatpants and jacket during the game, but instead they had to strip down to thin nylon shirts and shorts to play in sleet. Recently, their team got beat 8-2 by a bunch of 5 and 6 year-old boys from another Madrid barrio where they take futbol even more seriously.

One of my boys actually likes the game, has a sense of defense and is competitive. The other one couldn't care less. He's the kind that does flips on the goal during practice or looks for four leaf clover while the action passes him by. Both boys get shouted at and made fun of by their more advanced Spanish team-mates. The only saving grace is that they get some popularity points for being exotic twin, Americans. One day at practice, when the less-motivated twin wasn't paying attention and let the goal in, a bulky team-mate kicked his butt. When the little one showed some backbone, ran after the bully and kicked him in the tail-bone, my husband was so proud. The kids all laughed. This was the sort of "education" I was hoping for when I signed them up.

Mathletics

This brings me to my children's latest passion--Mathletics. We discovered this when the boys' school sent home a note saying that all the children would be participating in something called World Maths Day on March 2nd, and gave us their logon and password so they could practice at home. Mathletics educational software, by Australian company 3P Learning, does a very clever job of promoting themselves and successfully bridging the gap between the free, often-school-sponsored competition, World Math Day, and their subscription, for-pay product.

Now for a note of reassurance. The Fleury children are completely normal kids, which is to say that they would rather be watching cartoons and playing video games than doing anything remotely education-related in their free time. In fact it takes a kick in the butt to make sure they do their homework in their free time. We have tried other things to "trick" our children into thinking math was a game, but it never works--they always realize that math is work.

The genius of World Math Day is it flies in the face of current educational trends--don't stress the child out, don't give them time trials, teach them that "we are all winners"--and takes a page out of the book of Game Theory (how can I convince people to play hours of an online or video game, not the Math and Econ Nobel prize-winning kind). I haven't read this, but my husband, who has spent many an hour playing video games, says that the successful games involve competition, time-trials, levels, and "rewards." In World Math Day and Mathletics the children compete in 1-minute speed challenges to answer the greatest number of math questions (addition, subtraction, multipication and division) against children across the world. World Math Day truly was international--in any random game, depending on world time zones my children might be competing against "Jill" from Great Britain, "Mohammed" from Qatar and "Jesus" from Guatemala. Predictably, given the subscription cost, the players in the for-pay game seem to come mostly from Great Britain, the US, Canada and Australia. The child's first name, last initial, country flag, country and school name (if the school participates) will show up when they compete in both games. The children can see how they measure up real-time as a horizontal bar graph tracks the number of questions answered correctly by each child. In Mathletics, the children use the points to go shopping for virtual crap on the Mathletics site. One of my sons learned a lesson about spending his "money" when he lost 200 hard-earned points, accidentally purchasing a hair upgrade for his avatar, he thought he was just trying out. It's amazing how feverishly hard my children are working to purchase things that don't even exist! This business model is genius.

The children's new hero, is World Maths Day Champion Kaya G, a scrawny 11-year old from Australia. One child is an outright admirer and two of them are haterz, who complain that Kaya G was allowed to compete again 2010 and win again, thinking he should have been forced to give other people a turn and share the glory. They watch his video, note that he can go faster because he has a special numeric keypad, and that his avatar "has the most expensive background" on Mathletics.

The interesting lesson in this game is that 1) math is truly an international language and 2) no matter how good you think you are, there is some kid half-way around the world waiting to kick your butt. For some reason, this makes me think of the French News Parody show with puppets, "Les Guignols de L'info". They used to have this parody of a multinational company called "La World Company" with a Sylvester Stallone/Rambo type executive who used to always spout the pompous truism "Le Monde est Mondial": The World is Worldwide. Get used to it baby.

Mad About "Mad Men"

2010-02-04T04:40:00.000-08:00

My new television show passion is Mad Men—am about ½ way through Season 3. Although, the pacing has its occasional doldrums, watching this show is a guilty pleasure. Part of the show’s entertainment is the situational irony highlighting all the differences between “then” (late 50s early 60s) and “now.”

Then

Parents are always telling their children to “Go watch television.”

Children attend a birthday and one boy acts unruly. It’s not just his parent who disciplines him. It’s a friend of his parents who gives him a slap.

8-year old Sally Draper puts a plastic dry cleaning bag over her mouth and breathes it in. Her mother gets upset at her for messing up the dry cleaning.

The Draper family goes on a picnic and leaves all their trash on the grass without thinking twice.

Grampa Gene lets his 8-year old daughter drive his Lincoln town car.

Betty Draper brings her baby home in her arms, seated in the passenger seat of the car.

You could say the word stewardess. They were young, cute, flirty and happy to serve.

Roger Sterling worries about an ulcer and “does everything the doctors told him” drinking a daily glass of cream…and winds up getting a heart attack.

The cocktail bar is a central fixture in the Sterling Cooper office. Everybody drinks and chain smokes.

Pre-civil rights: with one unusual exception all the women at the office are secretaries. Plenty of sexually suggestive banter at the office, if any of the women are offended, their job security depends on not showing it. Women aren’t the only outsiders: “Negroes,” “Homos” and “Let’s go talk to some Retail Jews.”

People really dressed up when they went to work or out of the house.

The Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis and fear that the Russians “Will drop the bomb any day.”

The characters have interesting discussions and interactions with the social issues of their time—integration, the arms race, civil rights, the Surgeon General’s warning about cigarette smoking. It might have been a world filled with danger and uncertainty, but there was also a sense of optimism and excitement about the “Future.” Traveling on airplanes was exotic and exciting, television is the medium of the future, Kennedy has just been elected, Bob Dylan is hot, Space is the new frontier!

Like many of the children of the children of the 60s, I resent that all the fun, excitement and sense of expectation regarding the future disappeared long before I could experience it. We got the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Watergate, followed by the oil shock, economic stagflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, US manufacturing decline and the flower children became yuppies. Instead of optimistically engaging the world around us, we have been taught to stand at a cynical arm's length.

The fictional characters in Mad Men can say and do things that we, in 2010, publicly cannot. While the progressive legislation of the 60s paved the way for a (relatively) more open and inclusive society, the downside is that interesting public dialogue in America today is practically non-existent. You get two ends of the spectrum: the people who are happy not to think, and thus grateful for whatever one-size-fits-all ideology relieves them of this burden, while bestowing on them a corresponding sense of identity and purpose aka imposing their ideology on everybody else or--the equally annoying wishy washy contingent who are so terrorized by what other people think of them--that the prospect of saying anything at all is quite terrifying to them. Such a definitive utterance might be construed as a “value judgment” and, thus expose them as the frauds to post-modernism that they really are.

Since I’m particularly immune to drama with gratuitous Social Message ("Dislike my work at your own risk, I'll accuse you of being unsympathetic to the issues I write about!"), I wouldn’t enjoy Mad Men if it didn’t have some great characters and a compelling plot.

The More Interesting Characters

“Don Draper”
At first couldn’t stand him, but have grown to appreciate the good looking, strong-but-silent type ad exec with a painful past—information about which they dribble out to us as the show progresses. They’ve even managed to convince me that the frequent pans on his blank stare reveal some sort of reflective thought process going on in there. However, the one thing that bothers me the most about him though is the way he constantly cheats on his wife. None of these extra-marital relationships are particularly meaningful; he’s just a serial philanderer. Maybe it’s the female perspective here, I wouldn’t have a problem with this attitude or lifestyle if he were single or he had some arrangement by which his wife were ok with this: it’s the dishonesty that bothers me. Yes, his wife is rather neurotic, but she loves him. Ironically she looks better than almost every single woman he cheats on her with.

Possible writers’ notes on Don Draper’s “sex addiction”

1) This is what most men are genetically programmed to have, but unless they are living in one of your more progressive communes, possessed of extraordinary good looks, financial and/or professional success and strong sense of moral relativity aka Tiger Woods, are rarely able to act on this in a very satisfactory manner.

2) Don Draper, growing up as the abandoned son of a whore, who died upon his birth and left him to be raised by his no-good, alcoholic father who beat and demoralized him and his long-suffering “step” mother, with no love or acceptance from either “parent” or any figure in his life for that matter, lacks a sense of identity and looks for acceptance/affirmation of his masculinity in a stream of meaningless sexual relationships

Betty Draper
Cold, beautiful, ice-princess, Grace Kelly look-a-alike. While I feel somewhat sorry for her, Betty gets on my nerves. Hard not to realize how privileged her situation is when you have the more sympathetic Carla, the black housekeeper, doing most the work to raise Betty’s kids and not complaining about her life…Betty’s constant sulking does not engender much sympathy, wish she would get off the “dime” and actually do something about her unhappiness. Show strays into familiar “Madame Bovary” “Anna Karenina” territory where the only proactive thing, chance at happiness Betty seems to be able to imagine is having an affair, possibly with an older man who will act as a father substitute.

Peggy Olson
Moves out of the secretarial pool to become Sterling Cooper’s first female copywriter “since the war.” Her ambition combines spunk and seeming guilelessness. She might be the only “nice” character if you could forget that she abandoned her infant son…I do have to say Peggy’s mixture of innocence/goodness, her empathy for other people and mostly non-judgmental attitude combined with her desire to go a little wild (and mishaps along the way) make her the most interesting character after Don.

Joan Holloway/Harris
Very curvy office manager who dresses to kill. She initially appears bitchy but then becomes more sympathetic as the show progresses. Her sweetly poisonous lines as she offers advice/tries to undermine the girls are great. "Work hard and well you really won't even have to work will you? You'll be married and living in the suburbs" "He's a doctor, and he's good looking!" Mad Men producers thank you for casting Christina Hendricks in this role and showing that you can be pale, have curves (real curves, not the model look with the boys' backside and the blow-up pneumatic chest) and still be hot.

Pete Campbell
The scheming account exec. who will stop at nothing to get ahead. He occasionally is revealed to be vulnerable and does the occasional good deed, which renders him a little more multi-dimensional. Also sleeps around, no doubt because his father didn’t love and approve of him either.

Burt Cooper
Relatively minor character but entertaining none the less. The exec who no longer does any real work, but plays the “older sage” role. Has an affinity for Eastern philosophy and modern art. Relatively subdued compared to everybody else in the office--his risqué Japanese print of the Octopus and Geisha is hilarious.

Roger Sterling
In his mid-fifties realizes he hasn’t loved his wife for years and fulfills his dream to marry attractive 20-year old secretary. Any woman will do. He is in “in love.” Ironic exchange where Roger tells Don: “I realize that people are envious of me because of how happy I am” to which Don replies: “People don’t think you’re happy; they think you’re foolish.”

An Education

2010-01-30T11:02:00.001-08:00

Caveat: My children are surfing the Internet playing with virtual fish as I write this.

Just finished reading Nick Hornby’s screenplay for “An Education”. As an aspiring playwright, I especially enjoyed the introductory section where Hornby tells the story of making this movie based on Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay about her affair with a shady older man at the beginning of the 1960s.

Hornby points out the challenge in rewriting a memoir where a woman in her sixties writes about her sixteen year-old self. The point of a memoir is to be as smart as possible about one’s younger self. Meanwhile, “in a screenplay, you have to deny the character that insight otherwise there’s no drama, just a character understanding herself and avoiding mistakes.”

This made me think about episodes in my life that contributed to my “Education,” and the distance between the woman I am today and the naïve girl I was when I graduated from college. As I raise my own children, I wonder how to impart some of this acquired knowledge to them, so they can avoid the painful mistakes I made.

Children Interrupt: “Mommy can I make my bed and fold my pajamas for the rest of the year so I can earn $29 to buy some virtual fish and pearls?

Me: “No, but what you can do is think about ways to get a bunch of children around the world to ask their parents for money to buy things that don’t even exist. That’s a smart person who came up with that idea.”

Situation upon graduating from college
Graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude from Wellesley with honors degree in English literature.

Applicability and use of this degree in finding real world employment (in my particular case): None.

Sales and Trading job in Global Derivatives:
Failed this recruiting interview at a major international bank based on not being able to tell the department head a convincing story about how “street smart” I was. Not knowing what a derivative was probably didn’t help either, especially after lying about how “motivated I was” to get the job/find gainful employment/not go back home and live with my parents. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who didn’t know what a derivative was…

Thereafter, became extremely preoccupied with how to remedy the street smart situation, or more practically, convince other people I had remedied it.

Fundraising consultant/geisha:
Had to rely on family connections to get this job…was fired after 3 months for, among other failings: “talking while stuffing envelopes” and “forgetting the Xerox color-coding scheme for hand-outs.” The ambiance was straight out of the 1960s Mad Men secretarial pool, staffed by young girls from good families biding their time before marriage and housewives bored with the Junior League. Legendary was the Milf who dressed to emphasize her legs and décolletage as she leaned towards male chief executives at the moment of the crucial ask, imploring them to “think of the children.”

Most useful piece of information learned there—“always send hand-written envelopes with real stamps, girls, when you want to look classy and have strangers read your mail.” Whilst your vulgar (or more honest) operator might actually sleep with the client, a society lady, with well-honed skills, plays on your narcissism, vanity and social ambitions to clean you out. Hopefully it’s for a good cause. Least useful piece of information learned there: listening to The Head talk about all the fun things she did with her friend, The Billionaire. “The very rich are very different.”

Even then, I knew: no they’re not. They just don’t give a shit. Lots of very poor people don’t give a shit either and are “very different” too. The middle class, however, are most definitely not “very different” because they’re typically obsessed with what people think of them and studying the mores of their superiors in hopes of moving up the social ladder.

Temp:
After disastrous fund-raising geisha experience, temped as actual replacement secretary for partners at (what was then) Big Six Accounting and Consulting. Was a big hit because I did not talk to my boyfriend on the phone, smack gum or put my feet on the desk. One Managing Partner of Tax was particularly impressed with me because I came up with the brilliant idea of sorting his mail. Also had to listen to him ask me if “my parents could spell” because my name had an “h” in it. Did not feel it was worth my time to explain that my maternal grandparents grew up in France or that other languages and cultures have other ways of spelling things.

What I learned: If I ever wanted to find out the real dirt on what is going on at a company or what certain people are like, I would definitely ask the secretaries.

Mutual Fund Report Writer:
First real job I got was as a writer for a financial company, editing the annual reports for their mutual funds. The department head who hired me was straight out of Mad Men/had been the head of creative for a major SF ad agency at an earlier point in his life. He hired me because I could write, read books, liked to discuss literature and because he had fond memories of dating Wellesley girls when he got his (never-to-be-used) degree at Harvard Law.

Memorable moment in job: telling billion dollar fund manager that Humpty Dumpty was perhaps not the best metaphor for the currently depressed stock that he expected to rebound because “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men never could put Humpty back together again.”

Grateful for: fun colleagues and wonderful second boss, former school teacher and published poet who showed me that women don't have to undermine each other in the workplace, and that you can be an effective boss without being a total hardass.

Realization: Unless you’re J.K Rowling, writing ability and familiarity with children’s stories are relatively low paying skills. On the other hand, managing OPM (other people’s money) is a great paying job, but only a fool would pay me to do that.

JBoss Years

1998: Possibility: Marc would probably have happily built JBoss at Sun Microsystems for a 40% increase in his Pre-Sales Engineer salary and conferral of “Distinguished Engineer” title. Reality: It was impossible to build JBoss at Sun at that time, even more so for a low-level employee with non-established credentials.

Marc meets founders of WebLogic at JavaOne. They ask him if Sun is still the same fucked up company it used to be. He interviews for job at WebLogic, but this goes nowhere because they are bought by BEA and their hiring is frozen.

Our discussion about Marc leaving his job to become an entrepreneur:

“You’re going to leave a secure job with health care and benefits to write free software? If you are going to put all those hours into something, why not something that will enhance our future and pay for the baby’s college education?”

Ultimately, it was quit his job or go to therapy and pay somebody else to listen to how much he hated his job.

Realization: You have to really suck to not be able to find an equivalent, non-fulfilling job a year later if things don’t work out. In that case, you’re no worse off than you were before, but at least you’ve gotten the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” thing out of your system.

1999: Marc leaves to work on JBoss and receives a 300% salary increase for non-JBoss related software consulting in that period. Comment from a friend and former colleague about his desire to work as a software developer: “You’re moving down the food chain.”

2000: “This is not just a bad business plan, this is a horrible business plan:” Doug Leone, Sequoia Capital.

2001: Marc’s first start-up attempting to commercialize JBoss fails. My husband and I, along with our child and dog, move in with my parents. Marc comments to our lawyer at the time: “We’re the original garage company.” Lawyer replies: No you’re not. You’re the original in-law’s garage company.”

I decide to help him until he gets his feet off the ground, but wind up staying because the momentum really picks up.

2002: Twins are born, home office gets small. We look for office space as part of Georgia Tech’s ATDC Incubator program. ATDC’s response: “JBoss is a consulting company. VC’s don’t invest in consulting companies’ ergo a VC will never invest in you, so you’re not a fit for us.” We get outside office space elsewhere.

2004: We’re still not sure we want them, but top VC firms, attracted by JBoss’s user community and growing business, compete to invest in us. No VC would touch us with a 10-foot pole in 2000 when we had an early stage product and a company that was bleeding overhead. If they had, they would have bought us for pennies on the dollar and we ultimately would have gotten very little equity.

We built JBoss on our own because we have no other option and because it’s “fun to blow shit up” and beat down a billion dollar industry, especially if you can figure out how to get people to pay you to do this and make money that is good for you, whilst laughably small for your fat, established competitors.

Lesson learned: “banks only lend to the rich. Them that has ‘gits.”

Education

David Mamet’s definition of street smart (referring to his Hollywood screenwriting work): “the moment when you’ve been seduced and abandoned sufficiently to tire of it.”

Am I more street smart now? Yes, this is because I’m older and I’ve actually been on the metaphorical “street”.

It occurs to me that the only people who are sufficiently sharp to be street smart without painful experiences are the motherfuckers who are always dreaming up ways to screw over other people first, so they’re super savvy at anticipating how other people plan to screw them.

When you are nobody, with no money and no connections and want to break into an established industry and do things differently you can expect to hear two things: “Who the fuck do you think you are. Piss off.”

Interested in being an entrepreneur? Re-read, the children’s story: The Little Red Hen. The only point anybody wants to “help” you is when it’s time to eat the bread.

Painful Learning Experience: The first partnership contract we signed at JBoss paid us on the basis of production sales of the partners’ software with clients of theirs who also ran JBoss. After several months without getting a check, we looked up their sales structure and realized this particular company didn’t sell production licenses; they sold development licenses.

Realization: Otherwise smart people are particularly prone to falling for low-level cons because it never occurs them that people would take advantage of them in such an obvious way. To this day, I still wonder what advantage these people thought they would obtain by pretending to pay us something as opposed to the ill-will they were going to generate when we figured out what they were up to. The irony: we weren’t even expecting money at that point, we were just were happy to be seen with them…

Growing up/getting more savvy: Being excluded from giving talks at JavaOne, realizing Sun had locked down all the conference space in San Francisco that week, realizing that it never occurred/was not feasible for them to lock down the bar across the street and holding our first alternative JBoss One conference at the Thirsty Bear. Handing out flyers for our conference at Moscone center and being treated like unwanted panhandlers/agitators by Sun’s Key 3 Media lackeys.

Realizing that a normal pass to get into JavaOne cost $1000, but press passes are free: Finding sympathetic editors and becoming the “boat people” of J2EE article publishing the three months before the conference—with multiple authors per article.

Possible advice to children? Per Neal Stephenson’s marine-raider and all-round badass Bobby Shaftoe in Cryptonomicon: “Display Adaptability.”

Ability to effectively transmit the benefits of my experiences to children without them actually experiencing any of this for themselves? Unresolved.

Advice My Mother Gave Me

Most useless advice (transmitted from her mother's memories of house parties in the French countryside in the post-war years): "When you stay at other people's houses make sure you scrub out the bathtub, sink and toilet after you have used them. Don't assume the servants are there to do this for you. They will be reporting any negligence in your personal hygiene back to Madame. Oh, and always tip the servants.

Advice I use most frequently: (my mother worked for many years as a chef and restaurant manager): Always angle your knuckles, on the hand that you are holding the food with, away from the knife when you're slicing. Always serve things that you can re-heat at the last minute when you have large numbers of guests.

Advice my mother gave me that I'm still trying to figure out: An object should either be beautiful or useful.

Conversations Between My Boys

2010-01-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

Tw1: I do "this"...

Tw2: Oh no you can't, because my tanks have nano protection...

Tw1: But then my guards come and they have a neutralizer for nano-protection and they arrest you...

Tw2: Yes, but then my samurais have a weapon against your box and they free me...

Tw1: Ok, my tanks, the best of the world come, and they kill you...

Tw2: Well, then my planes come and they kill your tanks...

Tw1: That's not fair, you can't do that!

Tw2: Sure I can, and I kill you!...

Tw1: Whatever...

Author's Note: Twin 1 and Twin 2 are 7-yr old boys

The Reluctant Skiier

2010-01-07T13:22:00.001-08:00

Skiing, like golf, was not one of those activities that strengthened the marital bond. Nothing like being tricked onto a descent that is beyond one’s ability, concentrating desperately on making it to the next turn, while spouse cheerfully schusses down slope offering annoying advice, or worse still abandoning you to catapult down and land face forward, backside and legs up…like a sprawling cockroach. Might have screamed from top of slope with vocabulary that would shame a fishwife.

Advice from random man in the gondola: “It’s better to look good than be good.”

Children: the three that are old enough to ski or snowboard are all better than me now. They’re not even teenagers and already patronizing. Every dollar spent on ski or snowboard school is well worth it. Can I keep them in those programs until they are 18?

This feeling was compounded by experience riding in lifts with Other People’s Children, especially their surly teenagers. One sixteen year old girl whined: “Mo’om, I can’t believe you got me this grody sunscreen,” before flicking it off in disgust towards her father. My sister and I had couldn’t resist having fun with this one.

“It’s so hard to be your age, isn’t it?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to get to our age with fair skin like that and no sunscreen. Sun damage! All those unsightly wrinkles.”
“Not to mention the cost of laser treatment to get rid of those liver spots.”

Might be a bad mother: on another gondola ride, proudly explained to a woman that my advanced snowboarder daughter is still in classes so she can do things like the terrain park, where she needs more professional instruction. She replies: “Oh, in the local ER where I work, we call that the trauma park.”

Vocabulary: Seriously cannot imagine myself picking up the jargon. Am I the only one who thinks “Got a face shot in Pow!” sounds like manga porn? On the other hand, did find myself learning useful words like “white out”, for skiing in extreme low visibility and “graupel”, for the precipitation that’s somewhere between freezing rain and snow, and generally flays your face.

Skiing powder: Um…vastly overrated for people of my ability. More like sliding over ice patches and into snow drifts. Hubby’s advice: “Just go faster and you’ll glide over it” not particularly easy to apply when you’re already scared out of your mind.

Must be lacking in adrenaline response because don’t feel need for speed. Can’t get image of people who ski better than me and come home from vacation in various casts out of my mind. It’s hard keeping up with four children as it is; can’t imagine what that would be like if I were in need of massive physical rehabilitation.

Ski boots are: an instrument of torture.

Ski equipment is: a pain to keep up with when you have four children--all those face masks, goggles, mittens, helmets, boots, poles, skis. Not to mention complications when child utters most dreaded word in skiing vocabulary: “I need to pee.”

Ski food: $60 to feed family of five on junk food at the top of the mountain, anybody?

Best part of skiing: kids are fully occupied, ditching afternoon skiing (am tired by then anyway) to sip hot chocolate by the fire and read a book or bake Nestle Toll House cookies and watch the classic movie channel!

What is Thanksgiving?

2009-11-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

An English woman asked me this simple enough question today. Thanksgiving is the biggest American family holiday. It takes place on the last Thursday of November and is also the biggest air travel date in the US. As a family holiday, it is associated with all the things people usually conjure up when they think of family obligations, and people they only see once a year, with whom they may or may not get on well. My favorite movie about Thanksgiving and the modern American family is Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter.

In grade school, American children dress up as Pilgrims and Indians and are taught how the Pilgrims escaped religious persecution in England and gave thanks for their very first successful harvest in the New World, with a celebratory feast to which they invited their new friends, the Indians. Of course some of these escapees of religious persecution didn’t turn out to be the most tolerant people themselves. Then perhaps the Indians weren’t thankful when we later killed them and took their land, but only kill-joys bring that stuff up.

Thanksgiving also comes with various required dishes that many Americans hate, but prepare anyway because otherwise it wouldn’t feel like Thanksgiving—the chief ones are turkey, sweet potatoes, wild rice, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Depending on your individual tastes, the recipes you select, and your cooking ability, these dishes can either be mouth-watering or stomach-churning. In my case, having a Mother Who Could Cook turned me into the worst of both worlds--a judgmental eater, who never bothered to learn any of the basic holiday dishes because there was always somebody there willing and happy to cook them for me and everybody else.

Since I will be away from home and want to cook my own Thanksgiving dinner, my good friend has suggested I go to the Butterball website, which even has a turkey hotline. Whenever, I despair of my country, I am comforted to see this return to our roots and thoughtful marketing, aimed at me, the consumer. The Butterball website dispenses useful information like how long to bake your turkey based on its weight, how big a turkey you should get based on the number of people you are inviting and a recipe selection that caters to the two Americas—those whose lofty and unachievable ideals that lead them to attempt a demi-glace once a year, and those who happily grab the bouillon cube and water; those make their own pie crusts and those who grab the ready-made variety off the freezer shelf at the grocery store. In the US, there’s even a new option for centrists—the roll-out circle of pie crust that you can feel good about pressing into your pan, sometimes it’s even made with real butter.

A family member who once worked in Unilever’s baby foods division described the middle-ground consumer as the Holy Grail of Marketing. I asked her what Unilever thought about women like me who breast-fed for a year and made their own baby food? She said: “We don’t even bother to try and market to people like you. Our ideal consumer is the guilt-ridden mother who is willing to pay more to give her baby healthier off-the-shelf options.” After four children, whom I duly breastfed and made healthy home-made purees for, that woman is me! I’m glad to learn that I matter, that someone cares. Thank you for giving me those choices Butterball!

By the way, it was once brought to my attention in blog comments, some of you are offended by the fact I and other citizens of the US call ourselves Americans. Yes, some of us are aware that we are only one country in the continent of North America. However, if you can’t find any grossly more offensive use of imperialist, Euro-centric, US-centric linguistic manipulation to focus on, shame on you. Please devote your energies to finding and marketing a better alternative, preferably identifying with the struggle of indigenous native peoples…and not a16th century Italian mapmaker.

Book Review: The Hemingses of Monticello

2009-11-19T06:24:00.001-08:00

I picked this up as an impulse buy at the book store, and I'm glad I did. Like most Americans, I associated Monticello with Thomas Jefferson. Although I hadn’t read any Jefferson biographies, what I had read about him lead me to admire him as a Great Man of the Enlightenment—humanist, writer, builder of nations, universities, and of course, his own very lovely neoclassical house on a hill—Monticello—Italian for little mountain.

I wasn’t ignorant of the contradictions of the writer of “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” being a slave-owner, who had a long-term relationship and fathered multiple children with one of his slaves. I just didn’t see the interest of commenting on the obvious contradictions or indulging in historical “what if” fantasies. Thankfully, neither does Annette Gordon-Reed.

Her book is not about de-bunking Jefferson. She’s more interested in members of his family, about whom much less is known—the eponymous "Hemingses of Monticello". Gordon-Reed focuses on the Hemings for two convenient reasons: their connection to a well-known American historical figure, the fact that, due to this connection, there is somewhat more documentation about them than their peers in the plantation South.

What did this South look like? Gordon-Reed describes a pre-Revolutionary population of opportunistic frontier pioneers, living off tobacco as a cash crop. The English govt. gave the settlers land based on a head-count system—a certain number of acres for themselves and every other person whose passage they paid to the Colonies. Over time, the primary labor for the plantations evolved from English-born indentured servants to imported, enslaved Africans and their descendants. She explains that the typical Colonial plantation-owner was deeply indebted, usually to English trading firms and speculates that the self-interest in canceling that debt, as well as the Colonists’ desire to further encroach westward into the Indian lands (limited by Britain pre-Revolution) were less lofty ideals that may have accompanied “no taxation without representation.”

The story begins with Elizabeth Hemings, the daughter of an African-born woman and an English ship’s captain. There is some evidence to the effect that Hemings’ father recognized that he had a daughter and may have wanted to free her, but could not because her mother was the property of another man, who refused to sell her. She explains how, the word mulatto, for mixed-race people of African and European descent comes from the word mule, an animal that cannot reproduce itself—that the Colonies had laws against miscegenation but they were only applied to poor whites or situations where the mother was white and the father was black. When plantation-owners like Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles, took slave mistresses, like Elizabeth Hemings, and fathered children with them, the law looked the other way.

The growing number of these mixed-race children and the constant fear of slave revolts, caused the colonists to significantly depart from English law. The English tradition would have granted the child the legal status of the father, which would have meant freedom. Instead the Colonies looked to Roman law as inspiration, basing a child’s legal status on that of its mother—thus the children of free fathers and enslaved mothers, would remain enslaved.

The Hemingses were Thomas Jefferson’s family in the literal sense, not just from a paternalistic plantation owner’s view. Many of Elizabeth Hemings’s children were his wife’s half-brothers and half-sisters. When he married Martha Wayles, Elizabeth and her children came with her to Monticello. One of these half-sisters was Sara (called Sally) Hemings, who became Jefferson’s mistress and the father of his children, after his wife’s death. Gordon-Reed explains how the Hemings family’s mixed-race status and blood connections to the Wayles/Jeffersons gave them a privileged status at Monticello—many of them were taught to read and write, they were given better clothes than their enslaved brethren, taught trades, exempted from field labor, given more freedom of movement. Some members of the Hemings family eventually received their freedom, something that would not be an option for the enslaved people of Monticello, outside that family. Gordon-Reed makes the point that house work, while physically less taxing than field labor, was certainly arduous enough and presented the stress of negotiating emotional and physical proximity to the plantation masters. It also cut them off from the more Afro-centric traditions/culture that the fieldworkers were able to maintain.

Gordon-Reed is careful about not generalizing or making assumptions where they cannot be made. She notes that an enslaved woman, like Elizabeth Hemings, could not refuse sex with a white man, whether the children that resulted from these relationships were the product of rape, or whether there existed some emotional attachment with the children’s father depended on individual circumstances, not documented for the historical researcher. She notes that the same was more or less true for white women and their husbands. While these women had a relationship that existed “in law,” they often did not necessarily choose or love these husbands.

One of the more striking facts that I learned about Jefferson is that his wife died from complications resulting from her frequent pregnancies and childbirth. Gordon-Reed points out that while he apparently loved his wife and was inconsolable at her death, he could not have been ignorant of his role in the circumstances causing her death. On her deathbed, Martha Jefferson made her husband promise never to take another wife, a promise Gordon-Reed speculates was likely motivated by her own experience with two stepmothers and the desire to protect her children. Jefferson kept his promise to his wife, and later when seeking another outlet for sexual companionship, looked no farther than with her enslaved half-sister, thus keeping it all in the family, with a woman who did not have a legal status and could never be a step-mother to his children in the eyes of the law.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it does shine a not-very-comforting light on a not-so-distant era, a world where the children of the plantation owners would be given an enslaved child their own age to be a companion and later servant, a world where the house on the mountain is a symbol for the desire to aesthetically and morally distance oneself from the harsh realities of the plantation economy and the enslaved peoples that make it work; a house that was literally built and run by Jefferson’s own mixed-race family members; a reminder that the leisure to pursue the accomplishments achieved by Thomas Jefferson were underwritten by the enslaved labor of the people who tended to him, to his family, and his plantation. It also gives a face to those enslaved people, and looks at how they carved an identity for themselves, particularly, how a mixed-race family like Hemings both benefited from and paid a price for the different and ambiguous status they occupied within the Peculiar Institution.

She's Still Not Preoccupied with 1985

2009-10-23T02:34:00.001-07:00

I first heard this song waiting for carpool pick-up in my Volvo SUV☺ Not very nice to mothers are you Bowling For Soup? In cheesy recent pop, we much prefer Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom (has got it going on)” thank you very much. While I did (and still do) enjoy a lot of 80s music, I was also happy to put that decade behind me—no snakeskin miniskirt, boyfriend, or Duran Duran concerts to wax nostalgic about there.

My memories of the high school in the 80s have a lot more in common with Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep than “The Breakfast Club” or “Sixteen Candles.”

So it is not without irony that I find myself shopping for an 80’s theme party at H&M, where clothes from that decade seem to have made a comeback. They are playing “Blister in the Sun,” a female-vocalist, Euro-pop version that lacks all the angst of the Violent Femmes original. I score a pair of leatherette leggings, fuchsia satin top and black Members Only-style jacket. Paying for these clothes, wearing rather conservative and uninspired “bourge-y” sweater, slacks and Ferragamo handbag, I’m sure the register girl at H&M thinks I’m schizophrenic or have a whole alternative night-life as a street-walker.

After the H&M experience, I feel the need to explain to the 20-something sales-girl at Sephora the objective behind my request for shimmery fuchsia eye shadow: “I’m buying this for an 80s party” meaning “I don’t normally have this bad taste.” The sales girl with the dyed black hair and nose ring (who definitely was not born earlier than 1980) is impressed. “Una fiesta, anos ochenta, que guay!” She explains this to her gay male sales associate with the Clark Kent-style glasses. He’s impressed too. “Una fiesta ochentera! We wish we were going.” Are the 80s suddenly cool again, even for people too young to remember that decade?

Actual items of clothing or accessories worn by Nathalie MF in the 80s

1) Baggy sweater and leg warmers
2) Stirrup pants
3) Jellies shoes
4) Neon socks
5) Shirts with shoulder pads
6) Large hoop ear-rings
8) Stonewashed jeans with zippers at the bottom of the leg. I babysat many hours to save up the $50 for that pair of Guess jeans.
9) Overalls
10) Catholic school-girl plaid skirt, white shirt with Peter Pan collar, knee socks and penny loafers--until my transfer to “The John Knox Institute” which didn’t have a uniform, but did have a strict dress code
11) Lots of Laura Ashley floral skirts and dresses. Embarrassing but true. I spent a lot of time ironing yards of floral fabric to perfect this look.
12) Bermuda shorts and argyle knee socks.
13) Kelly green and electric blue eye-liner
7) Pouf-dress for prom
14) Total write-off year? 8th grade: braces, bad Farrah Fawcett haircut, put on a few pounds, but did not grow taller, had chicken pox the summer before, which was not good for skin, almost failed Algebra…

Then vs. Now

Favorite High School Reunion depiction—30 Rock Episode where Liz Lemon goes back to suburban Philadelphia for her 20th reunion: their private plane gets stranded in the bad weather and Jack accompanies her. She says nobody will believe he’s young enough to be their classmate and he counters: “Rich 50 is like middle-class 37.” She remembers being a nerdy outcast, but they all remember her as being mean, sarcastic and intimidating. She plays spin the bottle and winds up with Jack. They not only don’t kiss, he decides her classmates are right about her.

Sure I was: Nerdy and sarcastic, but most definitely not intimidating.

Happy I grew up then because….no cell phones, messaging or Internet. The stupid things you said and did were confined to throw-away notes or your high school yearbook--not broadcasted, mass-distributed and memorialized in the ether.

Moved on to the 90s for:

Curtis Sittenfeld “Prep” fame-whore/narrow-miss media humiliation

Graduated from college in 1994. Pitched my failure to find a job, combined with large number of interview opportunities to Rolling Stone writer for their “Gen X column—looking for the first job episode.” Used winning lines like “I discussed this with my grandmother and her friends and they said “Honey, we just don’t know what to tell you. When we graduated from college, we joined the Junior League and started playing bridge’;” “I used to write about Personality and Artistic Theory, now look at me, I’m writing about evaporators and batch digesters;” “I picked which college recruiting meetings to attend based on the quality of their buffet spread;” “I failed my interview for a derivatives sales and trading position at a large multi-national bank. I don’t think it mattered so much that I didn’t know what a derivative was…it was the moment I discussed my senior thesis on Samuel Johnson’s theories about being un-able to enjoy/live-in the present because we are constantly fixated on a past or future, which is either far worse or impossibly idealized compared to the ever-vanishing present…where The Head wrote me off as not possessing the driven, goal-oriented Derivatives personality.”

Almost (sort of, not) briefly Infamous

The article never got published and I got three good meals out of this (including one at an upscale restaurant!) on Rolling Stone’s tab.

Will never be representative of my generation because

I actually know most of the lyrics to Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone”…

The Beauty Issue

2009-10-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

My husband and his friend both assume that another friend of theirs is quite a hit among the ladies. Apparently high school and college were good times for X. “Can you imagine that they used to call him the 'Devastator'."

The irony is that neither my husband, nor his friend, bothered to ask actual women, including their own wives, what they think of X. The man in question is nice enough looking, but I haven’t spent much time thinking about him. The truth is that all above-average looking people are simple abstractions to me, unless they’ve written, said or done something that particularly piques my interest.

I don’t relate too well to the (outward) absence of obvious flaws in other people—like being too nice or too beautiful. No doubt this stems from an instinct to preserve dignity. One wonders if the unnaturally beautiful or virtuous might be applying their own (higher) standards to us: aka “could use an extra hour of treadmill every day,” or “needs to use more age-defying facial moisturizer” or “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.”

Even worse, if I suspect that an above-average good-looking person spends a lot of time improving or maintaining their physical appearance. Extreme self-discipline also makes me uncomfortable—seems too much like a self-mortification fetish. I, myself, last tried a diet in 2005—the South B(i)tch ™, which is exactly how carb-deprivation made me feel. Every time I’ve made an effort to diet or exercise more, I’ve lost the same five pounds, which immediately come back--since I haven’t been willing to make a Permanent Lifestyle Change. I do love walking and hiking, for the pleasure of these activities, not because they are connected in my mind with Self-Improvement. The irony is that all these men who spend hours buffing up in the gym would probably get more female attention if they did something like join a cooking class or book club or learn to dance.

On the self-improvement note, I recently received an email inviting me to a book signing by a former high school classmate who has written a book of lists to help people cope with those life-changing events—buying a new house, getting married, having children, getting divorced, dealing with death, and even the impossibly improbable like the World Trade Center Bombing on 9-11. I thought about this. I make lists too. This gives me a convenient sense of accomplishment, while enabling me to further procrastinate from the tedious things I mostly don’t want to do. I put things in neat stacks or star emails in my in-box. My rationale is that if something is important enough, somebody will remind me to do it and it will then pop back to the top of the list, and eventually I’ll take care of it.

Are women less judgmental about physical appearances than men? I thought about men who would not fall into the category of Somebody Whom Other People Consider Exceptionally Attractive that I would find interesting, like Salman Rushdie, for instance. I loved The Enchantress of Florence. What sort of woman, I wonder does a sensitive, deep writer-type like Salman Rushdie find attractive? Wife number four, Padma, model, celebrity chef. She's beautiful and she can cook, what went wrong there? Apparently, she wasn’t supportive enough of his career. What could the source of the “connection” he feels with most recent girlfriend, Pia Glenn be? Oh wait, that didn’t work out either…because he couldn’t get over Padma. He may write like an angel, but he appears to have the emotional maturity of a 16 year-old…

The interesting thing about getting older is that, for most people, it’s a great equalizer. Apparently X has been going to pick up his children at their school, and noticed that the high school girls in their plaid mini-skirts and knee socks still look cute, but they don’t give him a second look. However, he feels that his appearance is quite appreciated by these girls’ mothers. Sorry “Devastator” you’re cougar bait now.

Hola! or La Prensa Rosa

2009-09-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

“I moved back after five years, and nothing had changed. It was like re-discovering old friends.” The two French women and I were talking about the Spanish magazine “Hola” and the cast of characters that regularly grace its pages. In Spain, these people are called “Los Famosos.” Outside of Spain, with two or three exceptions, nobody has heard of them. The fact that three foreign women living in Spain, with respectable educations and otherwise challenging intellectual preoccupations and jobs had become aficionados of Hola! was intriguing, to say the least.

My Spanish mother-in-law explains it this way—“It’s a mental vacation. I can read the same article a second time and not even realize I’ve read it before.” Hola! was started in Barcelona, in the 1940s to focus on “la espuma de la vida”—(poorly translated by me) as “the frothy side of life.” Someone once told me it is the largest circulation magazine in the world. I have not verified this. What I do know is that Hola! pays people for exclusives and that many of its regulars earn all of or a decent supplement to their income selling “exclusivas”.

The Hola! formula never wavers: the photographs are authorized by the subjects and, to the extent that such a thing is possible, are always flattering. The call-outs inform us that the Hola’s cast of characters are “ready for love”, “in love”, “deceived by love”, or “recovering from love.” “So and so is thinking about getting pregnant”, “is pregnant”, "offers us exclusive photographs with her beautiful new baby.” These people give us exclusive tours of their homes, discuss their deceptions, tragic losses, projects and aspirations.”

Sus Majestades Los Reyes

At the top of the Hola! pantheon are their Majesties the King and Queen; their two daughters, the Infantas (my French friends agree there is the nicer looking daughter and “la moche”—the ugly one); the heir, Principe Felipe, who usually looks very dignified; and his brunette Barbie wife, Leticia; and the grandchildren. Their Highnesses are in Hola! by grace of who they are and tolerate the media attention with a certain bored “noblesse oblige.” Unlike the British Royals or the Princesses of Monaco, the Spanish royal family generally behaves itself and doesn’t offer much in the way of juicy scandals. This makes them less entertaining than the sub-deities of Hola, who make a concerted effort to maintain their status as regulars in its pages.

The Woman Who is More Noble than Everybody

People who know about Spanish history will tell you that among the Grandest of the Grandees of Spain, are the Albas. The Duquesa de Alba is so noble that if she were in the same room as the Queen of England, the Queen of England has to give her precedence. This is because back when the Queen of England’s ancestors were backwater Hanoverian electors, The Albas were Somebody’s. When Spain ruled the Holy Roman Empire, the Duque de Alba was at the center of things, suppressing rebellions in the Netherlands. He was immortalized as a bogeyman for later generations of Dutch children: “If you’re not good, the Duque de Alba will get you.” One of the Duquesa de Alba’s ancestors may have been the model for Goya’s “Maja Vestida” and “Maja Desnuda.”

What does the Woman Who is More Noble than Everbody look like? She has a distinctive white person’s Afro of frizzy gray hair and a face that sports the plastic surgery Masque of Death—facial skin pulled tight and immobilized by Botox, the Surprised Eyes, lifted up and pulled at the corners, and the Joker Mouth, stretched wide and tight for a perma-smile on the sides, offset by the puffy Collagen Lips. The Duquesa de Alba has an affectation for “hippie chic” clothes that might be in the closet of your teenage daughter. Occasionally, she has a health crisis and is wheeled into the front page of Hola! with mini-skirt hiked up around her waist and wild pattern stockings on her frail legs. The Duquesa de Alba has a “novio” or boyfriend. He is her son’s age and has some sort of time-punching, civil-servant job. Before her current novio, she had a second husband, a former Catholic priest, named Jesus. Real toffs debauch their Jesuit confessors. Before that she was married to some nobleman who fathered her five children.

When the Duquesa has a health crises, which happens more frequently these days since she’s getting on in age, her novio wheels her around and otherwise appears attentive to her needs. Hola! is very interested in the progression of her relationship with her novio. The Duquesa’s children are also interested in the progression of her relationship with her novio. If this relationship progresses too far, it’ll cut into their inheritance. None of these children appears to have done anything interesting with their lives besides appearing in Hola!

Tita Cervera—dite la Baronesa Thyssen

Tita Cervera also sports the plastic surgery Masque of Death, but instead of the grey Afro, she has a blond beauty shop “do”. Her wardrobe tends to Couture and is more restrained than the Duquesa of Alba’s (when you’re born Very Noble, you don’t need to make such an effort). I don’t know who Tita Cervera was but apparently she likes Art. At some point in her life she married Lex Baxter, an American actor who played Tarzan. Baxter was as a Stepping Stone. Thanks to him, she got a villa called Mas Mananas (More Tomorrows) and an introduction to the better sort of Society. In Society, she met a rich old German, called the Baron Thyssen, who inherited lots of things and also liked Art. Tita Cervera married the Baron, and became a Very Great Lady, or at least a very rich one. At some earlier point, she had a son. Nobody knows where he came from, but the Baron Thyssen adopted him. The Baron Thyssen finally had the good taste to die and leave Tita Cervera with lots of money and lots of Art. Tita Cervera had the good taste to make sure the Baron left a lot of this Art to Spain, so now you and I can go look at it in the Thyssen Bornemisza museum.

Tita Cervera has a son who looks a bit like a Spanish redneck—or maybe that’s just the rockero wardrobe and all the tattoos. He appears a lot in Hola! with his wife and their son, giving exclusive tours of their villa in Ibiza. Apparently, his mother doesn’t like his wife very much because she demanded that her “grandson” submit to a DNA paternity test. I guess that’s publicly calling your daughter-in-law a whore. Much ado about the DNA test, but the grandson passed. I think the only reason the son and daughter-in-law put up with Tita Cervera is because, otherwise, they’d have to give up their villa and get real jobs.

Tita Cervera may have the last laugh. She either adopted or genetically concocted (lots of speculation here) twin daughters. All we know is that she got them from some birth mother/rental womb rental womb out in California. Now we see lots of photos of the beaming Tita Cervera with her (not-so-cute) twin toddler daughters. Apparently it’s not just enough to triumph over the physical indignities of aging, but the limitations of childbearing as well. In the process, you can show up your ungrateful oldest son and his trashy wife.

Isabel Preysler, or How to be a Successful Ex-Wife

Isabel Preysler used to be married to Julio Iglesias and is the mother of some of his children. I think she also married a succession or combination of the following: Political Bigwig, Captain of Industry and Member of the Nobility. I can’t keep track. Since they didn’t have the good grace to leave her a widow, she divorced them or maybe they divorced her. My mother-in-law has a theory that powerful men like to be collectors, so they seek out women whose CV lists the names of many of their peers. She also says that La Presyler is rumored to have a special trick of passing out during the er, “little death.” Powerful men must really go for that too.

Isabel Preysler either has a better plastic surgeon than these other women or has the good fortune to possess the holy trinity of aging well—good skin (likely due to her Asian ancestry—she’s Filipina), good bones, and not putting on weight. My mother-in-law adds a commentary here based on the Spanish expression: “Las mujeres se enjamonan o se aparchimientan.” (With age) Women either become ham-like or parchment-like. She also offers some consolation for those of us who might be leaning in the ham direction. Subcutaneous fat does one have one advantage. It smoothes out your skin. The Hams can always console themselves with the fact that they’ll have fewer wrinkles than their Parchment friends.

La Preysler’s age-defying looks serve her well because she is one busy woman. In addition to posing for Hola!, she appears in print ad campaigns endorsing various products. Twice a year, she travels over to the US and takes a picture with George Clooney to promote Porcelanosa. There was some disagreement among the French people at the party as to whether Porcelanosa is a line of “chiottes” aka plumbing fixtures, or tiles. I think the tiles won out. To be fair, la Preysler isn’t the only one. Once you come to Europe, you realize how many “serious” American actors supplement their income here pimping out various products. George Clooney is also the face of Nespresso coffee and Hugh Laurie did a big Schweppes Campaign.

Isabel Preysler has one successful son, Enrique Iglesias, and a few other children who don’t appear to do much of anything besides appearing in Hola!

Carmen Lomana in “The Rich Also Cry”

I used to wonder what Paris Hilton would look like in her 60s. Now I know. She’s going to look like Carmen Lomana. Actual Hola! readers may wonder why I included a B-lister like Carmen Lomana. They may not even know who Carmen Loman is. That is because they haven’t seen Carmen’s YouTube video hit “The Rich Also Cry”—“Los Ricos Tambien Lloran”. Unlike her younger counterpart, Paris Hilton, Carmen Lomana’s video does not involve any physical exertions. Thank God! Carmen’s Chilean industrial engineer husband had the good taste to die at 49 and leave her a very wealthy woman. Her male-servicing days are over, thank you very much. What does Carmen Lomana do in her life/video? She shops, trys on clothes and shares her opinion about La Crisis. Researching Carmen Lomana on the Internet, all I learned is that her cleavage is a “feat of engineering” and that she wears a lot of Couture. Her interview with the journalist includes such gems as:

“Do you have lots of closets for your clothes?”

“I don’t have closets, I have rooms?”

“What do you do with your time?”

“I don’t know. What do you do? I get up at nine, I take my breakfast in bed. I spend an hour there reading the papers. I look at my agenda. I take calls from my bankers and lawyers to discuss business. I plan my day. I have a doctoral candidate who’s writing a thesis on me. That’s the ultimate luxury.”

“Carmen, are you feeling the Crisis?”

“Not personally, but it affects you…seeing my friends…people who have lots of assets but don’t have “dinero cash” to go to the supermarket…I mean those that were always poor, you know--the ones that beg--they’re used to it…but it’s tragic to see somebody who used to have a job in reduced circumstances.”

“Are you doing anything for La Crisis. For instance do you go to mercadillos (flea markets)?”

“Well, I do try to shop less, out of political solidarity. I’m wearing things that I haven’t worn in five years, and you know what? They still look great"…”Mercadillos?” You mean like those ones in the villages? Oh I love them. I’ve never been, but I’m sure they’re great.”

Taken: American stereotypes of the Continent in Femme Jep

2009-09-11T09:55:00.001-07:00

A recent email thread on the subject of fifth graders and why most of them do not need cell phones...let alone text messaging, called to mind this movie.

...Can't imagine why a fifth grader needs a cell phone for a school trip to France. I can barely figure out the international dialing prefixes from and to various countries, myself...but, then maybe I'm not as smart as a fifth grader. Do they actually think their child is in-danger, in their private school, guided tour over there? Reminds me of an in-flight movie I saw…

“Femme Jep” refers to a genre of movies featuring women (from the French word “femme”) in danger (jeopardy). It seems that some women have a statistic-defying penchant for encountering Mortal Danger. Or maybe it’s a vocation to one day appear as guest invitees, sobbing on the maternal bosom or sympathetic paternal shoulder of the host, saying things like “I know I shouldn’t have gotten into that car.” Think the whole tedious thread with Jack Bauer’s daughter, Kim, in the early 24s. The girl couldn’t make it further than 2 exits on the highway without encountering a psychopath or rapist.

Taken is the story of a down and out, ex-US Special Forces father (surprisingly cast as Liam Neeson), trying to build a relationship with the teenage daughter he neglected, back when he was making the world a safer place for democracy. He is nervous about his daughter and her girlfriend traveling alone to Paris. Rightfully, so, as it turns it out. Barely have the girls gotten off the plane at Orly (or maybe it’s CDG, can’t remember) when they meet a young French cheeseball, who offers to share a cab with them, on the way to their apartment. Lo and behold, he turns out to be a Spotter. Before the afternoon is even over, our two virtuous American girls have been abducted by a, get this, White Slavery Ring. Now, I know this sort of thing exists and it is perfectly awful, but the truth is they are far more likely to target girls from poor countries whose families (if they have any), can't afford to find and get them back. If I were an enterprising white slaver from Kryzhghfuckistan, do you think I would go to the trouble of abducting upper middle class American girls from the cab line at Orly, girls with ex-Spec Ops dads just waiting for a chance to Redeem Themselves, not to mention well-heeled stepfathers with private planes?

The highlight of the movie is an auction in the basement of an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris (definitely an Eyes Wide Shut “transgression among the rich and powerful” look to this scene), where wealthy buyers, including degenerate Arab sheiks, bid for the flower of our teenage American womanhood. Taken plays out like a de Sade plot, without the benefit of (intentional) social satire. Because, if you owned a multi-million dollar yacht, you’d actually need a pillowcase and handcuffs to get an attractive woman onto it?

Reading Wikipedia, I was surprised on two accounts 1) to learn that the movie had been financially successful 2) that it had been written and produced by Luc Besson. That would explain why the action scenes and suspense build-up did work well. Reflecting on Besson’s other work, I definitely like The Professional and La Femme Nikita better, but Not The Fifth Element! In the first two, the visual quality of his storytelling makes up for the limited plot.

As for Taken, part of what makes it a B movie--in addition to, as a by-product of?...the unoriginal story, and the uninspired storytelling, is its reliance on clichés—the young girl in jeopardy, the hard-boiled, yet tender-hearted father, the nefarious villains, the crooked cop. In this way, the film-maker can 1) by-pass the hard work involved in coming up with multi-faceted characters and plot 2) be assured that he is plugging into characters and themes with which his audience can easily identify. The only thing that surprised me, was that the underworld image of Paris, as such a dangerous place, was one them.

Software for the non-software girl

2009-08-22T08:31:00.001-07:00

In a recent conversation with my sister, she mentioned her semi-annual “let’s look at the direction of your career” meeting with her boss, and the fact that she would need to make a decision between the “management” and “specialist” track. My sister works for a rather typical subsidiary of a multi-national conglomerate with its shares of mergers, shake-ups and spin offs—so her two main concerns were 1) job security 2) the ability to advance.

I told her to definitely go for the specialist track. When push comes to shove, the superfluous management layer is the easiest to trim. Not only is “managing people” highly over-rated (you become the person responsible for those boring-as-shit employee performance reviews); it is also highly un-differentiated. Everybody claims they can manage people; whereas, in my experience, the most effective managers were formerly People Who Could Get Shit Done. This past experience tends to make the former Person Who Could Get Shit Done good at detecting other people Who Can Get Shit Done and extracting useful work out of them. Lest you think I’m naïve, I won’t fail to mention the second and altogether nefarious breed of manager. THIS person’s meteoric rise in the corporate hierarchy owes to 1) the fact that they are surrounded by people even more incompetent than themselves 2) aware of their own limitations, they channel their energies into sucking up to their superiors and taking credit for their colleagues and subordinates’ work…until such time as it is expedient to betray those colleagues and subordinates. Such is the way of the world. Unless, you fall into the latter category of person, it is best to 1) learn to speedily recognize them 2) stay out of their reach.

Nothing is so conducive to keeping out of the clutches of The Nefarious Manager and preserving your job safety, amidst the inevitable corporate re-orgs, as acquiring some valuable skill…preferably a skill involving the company’s arcane software systems, or, failing that, a good relationship with the right geeks so that if, called upon, you actually know the people Who Can Get Shit Done. The farther people are From Getting Shit Done, the less likely they are to know whom to call on when a problem occurs. One day, for some interminable amount of reasons related to the company’s jury-rigged, legacy apps and forced upgrades from the Even More Nefarious Database and Everything Else on the Planet Vendor, X fails. Akil in department Y might know how to fix or patch X. Secure in his job, not so much because it’s an enviable job, but because the job involves the plumbing of the company’s jury-rigged arcane legacy apps that none of his superiors will come near, or possessing some more generalized knowledge that will easily enable him to get a similar job somewhere else, Akil has a decision to make 1) he can make-up some lame-ass excuse for why fixing X is impossible, an excuse that would be utterly transparent to a person with some modicum of technical knowledge, but flies above the head of The Nefarious Manager, because The Nefarious Manager has spent the greater part of his/her life studiously avoiding actual work…or 2) he can fix the problem. In this situation you either want to 1) be Akil 2) have built up a good store of credit with Akil.

Never in a million years did it occur to me that I would work in the software industry. I was nerdy person, but definitely a Humanities nerd. My school experience with Math and Science was gratitude in being able to get as far as I did, and even more gratitude for stopping where I did. The last computer class I ever took was a BASIC class in eighth grade. I had to work my tail off to get a B+ and, even then, I sensed that I reached my limits. I am not even a remotely logical person. In fact, I’m not sure I really believe in logic. My limited experience of looking at the world is that this is not a place where Logic and Reason prevail. The survival skilz I’ve developed (from being kicked in the ass by my own errors) don’t so much resemble a Philosophy as little collections of dictums along the lines of: “You are always better off working with an amoral mercenary who will double-cross you at the first opportunity to the extent that you can SEE those opportunities (concurrently or before the mercenary); you should always beware the well-meaning fanatic, to the extent that you CANNOT see into the working of such a person’s mind and, therefore, will fail to predict their behavior.

Why did I enjoy working in software? I’ve written on this theme in the past. Here’s another angle on my previous, accidental career. First, shallow but true, being a woman, in a field where women are under-represented, the male/female ratio definitely appealed to my vanity. If I’d worked in marketing or communications in some more traditional industry, I’d have never gotten a second’s notice. Second, as a writer, I can relate to engineers, to the extent that I think both professions tend to get frustrated with the Actual State of Things (the Illogical World filled with its Nefarious Scheming Individuals and jury-rigged, Crap Legacy Systems). Writers and engineers tend to like building their own worlds, where they can exert total creative control. While my husband and I became entrepreneurs by default--because nobody in their right mind with any money or gravitas in the software industry would have supported us—the latter reason is why I can no lo longer imagine working any other way. Third, in open source software, I enjoyed working in a collaborative field. The myth that other people are going to do Your Work for you, for free! (“You should be grateful I use this free POS, tell me right now, why will not JBoss scale with my app!”) is completely ridiculous. The truth is that people who tend to specialize in relatively narrow fields, where there are few people with whom they can communicate, are often very willing to share their knowledge (but not with idiots). If they enjoy what they are doing and are smart, these people have invested some time and effort acquiring this knowledge (or, if they are lucky, had a Eureka! moment), so sharing that knowledge validates their work and experience…

Class Traitor?

2009-08-11T04:59:00.001-07:00

Little hussy with no sense of family identity or loyalty to “her people”

This is probably one of the worst things you could imply about a person in the American South. A recent, inconsequential Facebook exchange, involving a reflection on my middle-class upbringing, provoked a most unexpected, vituperative and, thankfully, private--or else all my Facebook “friends” would be having a good laugh at me now--email. The offended family member wondered how I could consider an upbringing that included trips to Europe “before adulthood!” “exclusive” private schools and membership “from both sides of my family” in “the most exclusive country club in Atlanta” middle class?

My entire life I considered myself a member of the middle class. Was this a false delusion? Was I, in fact, a class-traitor--a phony and a hypocrite who wouldn’t recognize the American middle class if it were two feet from my nose?

Why middle class? To begin with, in the US, you can’t be upper class without money. Whatever financial resources my antecedents possessed, had mostly disappeared by the time my cousins and I came around. It’s not that the money was completely gone—it helped pay for my sister’s and my private schools, summer camps, or trips to Disneyworld or cruises with our grandparents. However, money had ceased to be a comforting presence you could count on, with an air of nonchalance--described by “The Preppy Handbook,” as “the golden retriever snoozing by the fireplace: nice to have around, but not exactly something you make a big deal about.”

Ironically, the family’s most recognizable “middle class” trait, reinforced by its increasing distance from the flush days, was the need to demonstrate that we occupied a better plane of existence than the ordinary mass of humanity (whom we greatly feared sinking back into). This tendency manifested itself in little observations such as: so and so is “as common as pig’s tracks,” “country people don’t eat lamb,” “fine bone china,” “leaded crystal,” “cradle-born Episcopalian,” “the Junior League,” “debutante,” “all the men in our family are SAEs”, “only tacky people (whose marriage we haven’t been invited to) get married during Lent,” etc.

On the contrary, my limited experience reading about, and interacting with the Personages of this World (or, more frequently, their children)—where my presence was as remarked upon, to borrow a phrase from Neal Stephenson, as “a mouse turd in the pepper”--is that the upper class does not need to point out to you that they occupy a better plane of existence. This fact is blindingly obvious.

"Wait ‘till I get my money right"

Love the refrain from "Can't tell me 'nuthin" by Kanye West. The origin of my improved circumstances, in the plumbing of the Internet, is obscure enough not to attract much attention outside the middleware ghetto. In fact, the one moment of maximum public awareness was when a Personage—I’ll call him Genghis Khan—did take sufficient notice of my husband and our company to upgrade us from “mouse turd in the pepper,” to “mouse,” and, consequently--attempt to squash us. Surviving that and fading back to obscurity has been a good thing.

Growing up among inconsequential provincial snobbery, cradled in a family mythology emphasizing our participation in Great World Events and our proximity to Great Personages of this World--sometimes based on fact and, barring that, convenient coincidence--has somewhat immunized me to my current, improved circumstances. Like the French comedian, Coluche, I don’t consider myself a “nouveau riche,” but rather an “ancien pauvre.” Whatever penny-penching or profligate habits I may have, they, like my identity, were developed long ago.

I hate the word “networking”: cultivating people because you feel they can be of use to you. Thankfully, no one tries to flatter me; I would respect them less if they did--to be so deprived of self-respect to flatter somebody as inconsequential as myself. As for the occasional person who tries to cultivate me to get to my husband (or rather my husband’s money), the irony is that I spent the greater part of my career trying to shield people from my husband. If they get to him, they get what they deserve—he has very specific opinions about fools.

There’s a French expression: “pour vivre heureux, vivons caches.” This translates to “To live happy, live hidden.” The family’s picaresque repertory contained many cautionary tales, where instances of extraordinary success were reduced by unfavorable World Catastrophes—the French Revolution, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cuban Revolution (less mention was given to latter generations’ propensity to coast off the prior generation’s success, and spend down the capital). Of all these stories, my favorite was the tale of René Madec. Madec began his career as a humble cabin boy in the French East India Company; fought for the French in their ill-fated attempt to establish a foothold in Pondicherry; sometimes French corsair, sometimes British corsair; taken prisoner by the British, he deserted from the Bengal army and became military instructor to various Indian princes, rose to rank of Nawab and, later, king of Deccan, in the service of Great Mogul Shah Alam II. He accumulated great wealth, married "a descendant of Genghis Khan," before returning in triumph to his native France. Alas, as he was transporting a portion of his treasure back to France, his boat encountered a storm and was sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Mostly I’m grateful to my family their role in my sense of identity, however twisted it might be, and for their story-telling ability. One day, I hope to perfect this art myself. In the meantime, I’m off to learn more about l’Emmerdeur, the incomparable Jack Shaftoe, and his lady love, Eliza, Duchess of Qwghlm and Arcachon in "The System of the World," book three of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.

Quotes: "The Story of your life is not the story of your life, it's your story." From my sister-in-law, Carmela, would be grateful to anybody who can help me source this one.

"Success is a complication in the disease of ambition"--attributed to her father by JS Van Buskirk in Facebook update, possibly source-able elsewhere, as well.

Little souvenir of a terrible year, writing and depression

2009-07-26T15:16:00.001-07:00

It's that little souvenir of a terrible year
which makes my eyes feel sore...
from Here’s Where the Story Ends by the Sundays

Adapted from a letter to a good friend

… the work and adrenaline keep you from thinking too much. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. It’s the down time, you’ve got to watch out for, the slow-growing doubts and anxieties that creep in the void. After 5 years of building a company--eating, sleeping, living and breathing that entity, and caring a lot about a lot of the people we worked with, selling it felt like selling a child. If the purchasing entity’s culture is radically different from your own, and (you may feel in your less charitable moments) represents everything you built your company as a reaction against...that feeling is compounded. You can out-do the haters, writing your own epitaph. Not that this maudlin navel-gazing will generate much sympathy among your friends and acquaintances, either. You sound like the jilted ex-wife, complaining about the new wife coming in and redecorating the house and yanking the children out of their expensive private schools, etc. People's reaction is pretty much "Take your big-ass divorce settlement and move on." One person, in the industry, to whom I wrote, could relate. He wrote that selling his first company felt that way, but that "it gets easier each subsequent time..."

…my experience (with the meds) is that they don't "make you happy"--as I thought they would, until I tried them. What they do (when they work) is "take the edge off" and "help you cope." When I think about how I feel now versus back then, the biggest change is what (now) seem like relatively small things, used to really upset and overwhelm me. I couldn't let go or put things in perspective. I’d seize on some issue or thought pattern and gnaw away at it, like a pit bull with a bone. Things still upset me and I still get the blues, but the difference is that this is occasionally, not most of the time. Mostly, my baseline mood is a lot more calm, at peace…I don't necessarily like these people, but now I can accept them--along the lines of "They is what they is; and they ain't what they ain't…"

It's not just the lows that are more infrequent, but I can also recognize and appreciate more frequent moments of happiness…it hasn't been easy...I can recognize some of the bad old bad habits coming back. Maybe this will work now, maybe it will work later, I don't know. The good thing is that I know that, at least, there is something that will work.

What helped me a lot were two changes in my life: moving and starting a new creative project. Home was very connected in my mind with the productive start-up years, so living here felt very anti-climactic once we sold the company. Right now, I like the detached feeling of living in another country. Nobody knows you or gives a damn who you are. And, even if they did, nothing about who you were or where you came from in X is relevant in Y. This doesn’t just work with geography, but changing industries or careers, as well. Ironically, having strong roots and family ties makes it easier to let go of everything and feel at home in totally foreign places...because I can (and usually do) always go back. A cheesy reference, but the line from the movie Fight Club: "Don't let the things you own, own you" makes a lot of sense to me.

As for writing a play, I am somebody who is essentially happy when doing creative work. In my case, what I enjoy is writing. I think I read and write, in the words of C.S. Lewis: to know that I am not alone. I wrote the play with a new friend--who like so many people living parallel lives that I passed on a daily basis, I’d never gotten to know before. Working on a new creative/collaborative project has helped pull me out of my isolation, feel like I am moving forward with a positive, fun, totally different phase of my life…I am unhappy when I cannot control circumstances. What I like about writing is that I have complete control of this entity and can take all the things that have frustrated me in my life...work them out on my own terms, and have the last laugh.

it's that little souvenir of a colourful year
which makes me smile inside
so I cynically, cynically say, the world is that way
surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise
here's where the story ends
ooh here's where the story ends

Madrid Blog--Barbarians at the Gate

2009-05-28T04:49:00.000-07:00

I liken the decision to live in some place where you have no cultural, family or professional ties to "dropping off the grid." This sort of move is easier to do if you are the sort of person who felt "a few degrees off the grid" in the place where you grew up. Even if you did fit in wherever it is you grew up or live today, you need not travel far to find someplace you don't.

I remember, the kind of reception I got in the 80's when I traveled with the debate team from my private preppy (we send 20 kids a year to The Ivy League!) Atlanta high school (see The John Knox Institute) to compete against other schools in places like Americus and Warner-Robbins, Georgia. This was a sardonic: "Well, ain't we privileged to have you Atlanta private school kids with us here today."

The beneficial effect of walking outside one's village, for the person capable of acquiring perspective, is the rapid realization that "who" you think you were, back wherever it is you are from, has absolutely zero meaning to the locals "here."

Yesterday, was our court hearing in the affair of the neighbor's noise complaints against our children. As it turns out--in the exactly 12 units in the building, the only people who have had an issue with us are the (now departed) Germans (by way of Argentina) in the unit across from us and the bat-shit crazy people in the unit below us. Rather ironic, considering the former are one generation removed from The Reich and the latter's example of triumphant child-rearing is the single adult daughter who lives with her parents, works for her father, and doesn't look a day younger than forty (to be fair, this could be the perma-mask of bitterness etched on her face).

It was both less than I was expecting from a legal point of view--all that went on was that our lawyer told the judge that we deny the accusations they make against us (like our kids make noise at all hours of the day and night--not exactly possible since they're in school all day and in bed from 9pm to 7am). From an emotional point of view it was worse. Most of you have better things to do than waste time on Facebook, but this pretty much sums it up.

Me: "Nathalie Mason-Fleury experienced the disgust of having the 80-yr old president of our building association tell his lawyer and my lawyer (AS IF I WASN'T THERE 3 meters away) that it is "not normal" for a 2-yr old to wake up at 4 am in the morning and cry."

Cristina: "ask him to come to my house yesterday night... 2-yr and 9 months crying. At 3.32. And the three were hungry and 1 with fever. drinking bottles and eating biscuits."

Karen: My 17 month old made it to 5:30am before the molar coming out of his gums got the best of him yesterday. No, crying there...

Fiona: like he would have any idea. My two year old was hollering at 5:30 am today before I bounded to his room, gave him the pacifier, and he went back to sleep.

Abigail: What alternate reality is he living in? The one where the babies are silent and the old farts make all the whining? And even if it wasn't 'normal' wtf are you supposed to do about it? It's not like you can tell your doctor 'I'd like a peaceful sleeper' and then get pregnant, can you? can you? did I miss something here?

Heather: If his own mother were still alive, she'd straighten him out. "Oh yeah, you used to wake me up at 4 am all the time," etc.

In 8 months, the first time I saw my elderly neighbor was yesterday--I imagine him, mummified in his apartment, remembering a better world, when Franco was still alive and running things, children knew their place and foreigners weren't your neighbor.

Madrid Blog--The Calle Serrano Look

2009-05-28T04:48:00.001-07:00

One of the first things I noticed is the way people dress here, in this up-market part of Madrid. Spanish men, especially, stand out compared to their American counterparts. The men here seem to take particular pride in their appearance. The other day I saw a man in what had to be the height of the Madrid "pijo" (preppy) look--cantaloupe-colored cotton slacks with a Kelly-green linen blazer. Now that summer's arrived, sherbet colors abound here--lemon, lime, orange, raspberry, pink has always been popular, for men. Shirts come with loud stripes and checks, and everything is always impeccably ironed. Los Pijos also seem to love labels as much as their American preppy counterparts. As my sister-in-law put it, when Izod and Burberry came back, it wasn't a problem, because, in Spain, they never went out of style.

My father who was an American child of the fifties grew up with (and continues to wear) a vibrant color-themed wardrobe. If you saw "Wedding Crashers" and the outfits that Owen Wilson and Vincent Vaughn borrowed from their hosts (I think some patchwork pants might have been involved)--you get the idea. However, for later generations of American men, it's primary and neutral colors only, scruffy dressing, absolutely no ironing except for the dry-cleaned work button-down. For a man to take any interest in his appearance and grooming immediately labels him as homosexual, although, lately, in the generation younger than mine, this has expanded to the more inclusive "metrosexual."

The children's clothing in Spain is very classic and beautiful. Think Liberty prints with color-coordinated cardigans and stockings, and Mary Janes for girls--cotton dress shirts, pull-overs or cardigans, shorts, knee socks and loafers for boys. People also take pride in dressing their children in coordinating or matching outfits. It's possible to find these sort of tasteful, coordinating clothes in very reasonably priced, mass-market stores. In the US, my complaint is homophobia-wear only for boys--see description of US menswear above--add massive truck or professional sports logo and, once your girl is older than six--and you don't want to dress her like a tart (hello JonBenet Ramsey) good luck. No I don't think little girl's party shoes need to have heels, nor do I think I should have to pay a premium to buy my children tasteful undergarments and sleepwear aka the type that does not come in heinous colors and is not emblazoned with the latest movie or cartoon themes.

For womens' clothing, I can't say much because I "don't got the look," (nor did I in the US). In contrast to the men, I would say that colors are darker or neutral and there are less patterns or large prints involved. Except for the long tops, pants and skirts are more tailored-fitting. They wear a lot more jewelry (costume and real) and accessories than their American counterparts and, if they go out, it's usually with make-up and their hair "done." Absolutely no sportswear anywhere outside the gym. They look at me with disapproval when I walk out the apartment in sweatpants, or jeans and schleppy t-shirt with barely brushed hair and no make-up. So now, I don't do that so much. I smooth my hair, wear dressier clothes, grudgingly put some powder and lipstick on my face--as some sort of armor against the disapproving stares of the neighbors.

The women my age are not so much judgmental as curious. My Spanish women friends ask me, Nathalie, how is it that in the US, with so many stores selling nice (and cheap!) clothing you Americans dress so poorly? I tell them that depends where they go in America, but they probably are right, in general. I say I don't know, I think it's because we have a car-based culture, where people drive everywhere and generally aren't walking in the streets (at least in "real" America :) Yes, we're an overweight nation but we do try to work out. So, if I am driving my car to drop off my kids at school, go through the drive-through at Starbucks, and then go to the grocery store, and trying to get a run in before the day gets too hot, it doesn't matter how I'm dressed, because nobody sees me, or if they do, it's just other mothers like me...

Live from the Trenches of Motherhood

2009-05-22T11:59:00.001-07:00

Ce n'est pas aujourd'hui que le ciel me tombera sur la tête...

Today, the bus monitor called me because I forgot to pick up my daughter.

It was one of those Friday half-days, which are darned hard to keep up with, what with all the Spanish holidays commemorating obscure Saints and glorious Apparitions, Assumptions, Ascensions and Immaculate Conceptions of our Our Blessed Virgin...not to mention the vagaries of the French Education Nationale labor calendar, with its various strikes and half-days (to plan how they will do less work in the next calendar year). Not that I'm going to spit on Education Nationale because my husband is a product of that and my daughter has a bona-fide, CERN-trained Ph.D. particle physicist as her fourth grade teacher, who's young, cool and lets the kids call him by his first name. Plus, did I mention that French public education abroad is a real bargain compared to anything you would pay in the US. Oh, and the school year lasts through the end of June, joy!

You may be a better parent than we are

I suppose this is an improvement over last year. That was the year my daughter's school teachers called a conference with us to discuss her "organizational issues"-- how she was turning in her homework crumpled up and forgetting to bring the appropriate red, blue and black color-coded ink pens.

My husband and I both, independently, forgot this meeting and showed up 1/2 an hour late. By this time the "educational specialist" they have sit in on these meetings had another appointment. All we could do was grin sheepishly and suggest that "Perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." "Organizational skills?" The child gets good grades, is sociable with her peers and respectful toward her teachers...give me a break, private school.

Today, my "independent-minded," au naturel (our latest idea for "shock and awe" potty training by the September 3-yr. old preschool deadline) 2 year-old shited all over our white leather living room couch. Soon after that, the latest issue of the "Potty Training Concepts" newsletter appeared in my in-box. Coincidence? I think not.

This inspired my "creative" 6 1/2 year old twin boys to use Mac Photobooth to start producing "poop films" (don't ask). I expect great things from these two.

Is in imminent danger of becoming a Twitterwhore/future Facebook updates

"Try for (fuller-figured) Lisa Cuddy look"

"What would Jack Bauer do?" Vis-a-vis the fact, Marc has "lost" 3 iPods in 7 months and need to look up iPhone app with bad-ass tracing software.

"Said no to the gym and yes to carbs!"

"Is so hep and desirable that hep and desirable people--more so than you, my dear 'friends!'--fight over the privilege taking me to hep and desirable places."

"Top 5 things my 'friends' resent about me"

1) My classic good looks?
2) My stunning figure?
3) My plastic, fantastic life?
4) My H.I.P. (Higher Ivy Potential) children!

"Luv ya'all too. Air kisses. Mwah, mwah."

Madrid Blog--La Señora que Sabe

2009-05-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

Adventures in the Workplace and with El Servicio

This one is going to make me wildly unpopular... I will preface the entry by saying that I have limited experience in management. This experience has been "when it's great, it's great," but, in those cases where you may be managing the "lesser motivated" worker, management is highly over-rated.

In my brief professional career, I worked with an outside PR agency team that was very competent. In general, they knew more about what they were doing, than I did. They made me look good. In my house, in the US, I employed a nanny for my children (live-out, hourly wages). In the seven years she worked for me, I don't think she was sick once and I can count on less than ten fingers the number of times she was late to work.

Recently, though, in Spain, I have not had such good luck in the house-hold help category. I wonder if this is not due to different cultural/personal expectations about the workplace. This is exemplified by a conversation I had one day with my "interna" about the fact that the children were consistently late for the school bus. I approached this from a very American HR workplace bias:

"We have a problem. How can we work together (as a team!) to solve our problem?"

I was shocked by the interna's response, which (paraphrased) was:

"Well, Señora, you can do my job for me."

The American weakness: Need to be liked/loved.

Wonder if this comes from the joy that is the American high school experience, where popularity is generally valued above and beyond any sort of academic achievement?

In the JBoss years, it truly was inconceivable to some people that my French-raised husband lacked any concern for what people thought of him. "Not giving a damn" is a good quality to have if you are an entrepreneur. Why? Because if you are doing something truly novel and different (with no money and connections in your chosen industry) expect to be called crazy. "Crazy" is a good thing. Nobody fucks with crazy. When you are in tight situations, acting like a completely unpredictable motherfucker who would rather self-implode than let the other guy win, increases your chances of survival and coming out ahead. If you succeed, you can always console yourself with the Southern (US) dictum: "When you're poor, you're crazy; when you're rich, you're eccentric."

If you are on to something, you will spend the second half of your start-up's life fending off people trying to kill you. This includes insignificant pissants as well as the powerful Personnages/Corporations of this world. Why do they abuse their position? Because they can. Concentrate on out-witting them and extracting revenge, or acting more morally if you ever get near their industry position.

I see "needing to be liked" in the work world as a particular American weakness. Nothing is more ridiculous than the company that thinks they can under-compensate their employees because they they are such a "cool" place to work. Note: employers who think this way are probably so far from cool the light from cool would take a million years to reach them. This is on par with the housewife who thinks she can pay "Edwina" less because Edwina "loves" her children. If Edwina won the lottery, would she be working for you? It's a job, people are there because they need the money or expect a liquidity event.

As for what other people think of us, not just employees, but friends and family, we probably are better off not knowing :) In a work relationship, I see fair compensation and establishing a relationship of mutual respect as more important.

American optimism: You are responsible for the ultimate outcome of your career

OK, I just read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" like everybody else, and he makes some good points de-bunking the individual's responsibility for her own ultimate success. However, if you don't start from this basic assumption, you will not be able to benefit from whatever Gladwellian experiential, cultural, chance advantages that come your way.

Religious bias and Social Values

I am the product of a Protestant/Catholic marriage, and was raised in, and, am comfortable with, both traditions. This is not a discussion of religion or theology, but a thought about Protestantism and the American cultural bias regarding individual self-determination. My experience with Catholicism was very laced with the "look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field--the good Lord will provide" outlook. The Protestant outlook, on the other hand (which is nowhere to be found in the Bible): tended toward "God helps those who help themselves." The Calvinist predestination doctrine--where it is assumed that God rewards the "predestined" with material success and that material success reflects moral character--is even more pernicious...The two traditions also have different outlooks on the individual's ability/responsibility for interpreting his faith. My experience with Catholicism emphasized dependence on the clerical hierarchy to achieve an understanding of theological tenets; whereas the Protestant tradition (of course both traditions have their dogmatic sects) generally emphasized Biblical textual scholarship and the individual's responsibility to work out his own faith--an approach that has understandably led to endless dissent and schisms...

Them that has 'gits

All this is speculative divergence from what I see as two fundamentally different outlooks in the workplace. One approach is that "the world has always been divided into "jefes" and "empleados". As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, world without end, Amen. Fuck them, I am going to do the minimum I can get away with in my job. My misery/poverty is virtue in and of itself. I'll get my reward in Heaven.

Self-determination

The second approach is that "I can impact my ultimate outcome in life" and, by my hard work, I could become a "jefe". This involves taking responsibility for and pride in one's work. It especially comes into play in dealing with how people handle mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes. This does not distinguish the former or latter category of employees, but how they handle them does. Employee A will 1) acknowledge no responsibility for his role in the mistake 2) expend endless amounts of energy telling me why it's not his fault and how he could not have done anything differently. Employee B, on the other hand, will 1) acknowledge her role in the mistake 2) spend her energy telling me what she is going to do in the future so that this never happens again.

FB and Me, reconciling with Facebook

2009-04-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

Early Infatuation

My relationship with FB began with an initial addictive phase, kind of like getting your alumni magazine and looking up your class news—what are all those people I haven’t kept in touch with doing these days?

I, myself, never send in class updates. This is because for most of my life I hadn’t really “done” anything. And then, when I finally reached a point of my life where I had done one or two things, I felt like notifying people I hadn’t kept in touch with would be in rather bad taste--on par with the writers of The Obnoxious Annual Christmas Card.

Then followed a phase of relative disenchantment. After overcoming my initial hesitation about being in The Book, due to the fact that I’m not currently enrolled in high school or college, there came a period when The Book was discovered by many more people....

The inflation/devaluation of “friendship”

Not being a particularly socially-needy person, and someone who, throughout her life, has viewed friendship in terms of quality rather than quantity—many second-degree friend requests surprised me. If you have more than 400 Facebook “friends,” there is word for you: friendwhore.

One of my friends, who hesitated to join FB, used the following rationale—if you are my friend, chances are I’m already in touch with you. She’s right, but she's missing something.

The good? There are people in our lives that we have lost touch with, have interacted with on a limited basis or “second-degree” friends--with whom we may have a personal connection. We may not have the time or energy to call or email these people, but it’s nice to be able to keep in touch on a limited basis—thus the success of the Facebook portal approach and 140-word status update.

The bad? FB offers so many new opportunities for social awkwardness. My two FB etiquette moments and personal lows are

1) The friend request from somebody who not only WASN’T a friend in high school, but was really obnoxious and belittling back then, but now wants to sell you their investment “opportunities.”

2) Getting a friend request from somebody you considered a real friend, being excited about being back in touch with them, writing them and they never write back. You realize, so and so never really was your “friend” but just wants to offer you some portal into their life and up their friendwhore quotient.

Slippery slope to Twitterwhore?

Lisa Nova’s video offers a funny take on this tendency.

Now that I am dealing with many people, some of whom are not, strictly speaking my “friends,” won’t inundating them with the inane details of my daily life only confirm what I always suspected—that X (from high school or my circle of acquaintances) really does think I am a loser? And, shouldn’t I be above caring what X thinks of me in the first place?

The FB updates I see tend to fall in these broad categories (feel free to suggest more in comments): navel gazing, “Mom,” industry/field of interest updates, and Don’t you wish you were me/I have 140 words to convince you that a crumb of my daily life is more interesting than your entire existence.

I thought about my own updates and decided they tend to fall in the Mom and navel-gazing category—most likely because 1) I am psychologically predisposed toward navel-gazing 2) my “Mom” existence currently prevents me from doing much more than navel gazing.

Don’t You Wish You Were Me!!!

This category tends to comprise the majority of FB offenders. Now I cannot compete with Pretentious Git, who “is in Bali hanging with Bill (Gates) and Timothy (Geithner) solving the global financial crisis.” On the other hand, ZenMom, who “is enjoying a transcendent moment of motherhood” might particularly grate on my inadequacies/insecurities, since my particular experience of motherhood at that moment might be Nathalie Mason-Fleury “is up to her elbows in shite.”

Has moved beyond categorical statements

More recently, I simply appreciate Facebook for what it is—as much or little as you make it, superficiality, inanities, second-degree friends and all. Yesterday, I was scrolling through the “News” section and smiled to see that many of the people in Atlanta were writing about a thunderstorm. Now I’m Atlanta born and bred. There have been spring thunderstorms in Atlanta for as long as I can remember. There was something comforting about reading homey details such as “is happy that the storm has not delayed their flight” (yet…) or “is planning to celebrate the storm with New York strips and a bottle of Shiraz” As long as it doesn’t cause a power outage, there is nothing I love so much as a good gully washer. It feels like home. For a moment there, I felt connected.

I receive my French citizenship

2009-04-23T15:21:00.001-07:00

I dropped by the French consulate in Madrid today and picked up a sheaf of papers informing me that I have acquired French nationality. This included a welcome letter from President Nicolas Sarkozy "Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur..Vous êtes désormais citoyenne ou citoyen de notre pays," the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man), extracts from the Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958, and a copy of La Marseillaise.

I suppose it's fashionable and convenient today to collect citizenships, but somehow I was touched. My maternal grandfather was Franco-American and grew up in France (as did my maternal grandmother). However, due to American politics immediately following the second World War, American naturalization required that he renounce his French citizenship, because of his service in the French army.

When I was a child, I first wanted to learn French because this was the language spoken by my mother's Irish-American/Colombian/French family. I was certain that only my failure to decipher the French language lay between me and exposure to many fascinating adult conversations and secrets. Every Sunday, my mother and her five siblings, their spouses and children were expected for a leisurely, alcohol-infused lunch, the kind with irreverent, salacious conversation, punctuated by multiple courses, ending with salad, cheeses, desert, coffee and brandy. My grandmother was an excellent cook--would whip up stacks of crêpes for Mardi Gras, baked her own bread, croissants and cakes, made her own jellies, candied fruits. She also cooked a lot of dishes that, to a McDonald's-loving American child, were frankly horrifying, such as frog legs, tongue, and bouillabaise.

By the time I was ten, I drank water mixed with wine at these lunches and sucked on sugar cubes dipped in coffee, afterward. While I didn't learn French until middle school, what I did learn, growing up with a large and boisterous extended family, was that you had better speak louder than everybody else or say something clever, if you wanted anybody to pay attention to you.

My mother's family owed much of their financial stability to my great-great grandfather, the child of Irish immigrant parents, who found success as the owner and operator of a string of bucket shops in New York City. Unfortunately, the only inclination his son, my great-grandfather, showed to follow in his father's footsteps was an affinity for drinking and gambling establishments. Other than that, he chiefly occupied himself spending his father's money. Just before the First World War broke out, he went on a European Tour. In Paris, he was introduced to and, soon after, married the daughter of a French count. This was my great-grandmother, whom I knew very well. She came from a family that had actively supported the monarchy (and been punished for this) during the French Revolution.

My great-grandfather eventually died an early death from alcoholism. Meanwhile, my grandfather grew up in Paris, living with his mother, his grandmother and his step-grandfather. Vacationing in Switzerland, my grandfather met and fell in love with my Colombian grandmother, who also grew up and lived in Paris. However, before they could get married, World War II had started. My grandfather was drafted into the French army, fought during the brief time the war lasted for France, then became a prisoner of war in various German camps.

My grandfather finally escaped, but the experience left him with lasting psychological scars--what would be described today as "post-traumatic stress disorder." After the war, my grandparents got married and moved to the US. My grandfather had ambivalent feelings about France, the War and the Occupation. I think he viewed the United States as a new start, a place distant from the painful experience of the war years.

From my grandfather's prisoner of war stories; to the great-grandmother, whose childhood memories included the black crêpe with which her family shrouded the windows of their home, every 14th of July to honor their Royalist forebearers put to death during the French Revolution; who, in later life, proudly sewed a line of red thread on her few formal dresses to commemorate the Légion d'Honneur she was awarded for her work in the Resistance; the very foreign-ness of my French-raised maternal grandparents to me, as a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the 70s--a jumble of personal associations accompany this new, official sanction of the French part of my identity -- and, finally, the thought that, in my marriage to a Frenchman, whom I brought back to my hometown, and, our formation of a family and a company together, I may have closed the circle.

Madrid Blog--We get sued

2009-04-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

...for having children

If you are a foreigner and move to Madrid, do not, necessarily expect a warm welcome.

Yesterday, we, or rather

Don Mark Fleury and Dona Natali Manson

***note to Building Association of Serrrano XX, before you lawyer up, do your research. My husband spells his name "Marc" with a "c." and my first name is spelled "Nathalie;" not to mention that my honest English stone mason forbears would cringe at the misspelling of their last name to confound with that of the notorious 20th century serial killer.

received an official communication from the Juzgado de Primera Instancia de Madrid, from one Don Ramiro Blah Blah, President of the Building Association of Serrano XX, a building of exactly 12 units, half of which were owned at one time by his father in law, in which it is alleged

1) "Mark Fleury and Natali Manson" have four children

2) these children own bicycles

3)and roller skates

4) and scooters (Nathalie comment: nope sorry to disappoint building association president man, the Fleury children do not have scooters in Madrid)

5) that these children get up in the morning (Nathalie comment: yep, at 7am during the week, in order to catch the bus--per state-mandated law that my children be enrolled in secondary education)

6) that the Fleury children have been known to run, jump and shout in the aforementioned apartment

7) that the combination of the above results in an indiscernible mix of noise reflecting a most scandalous and bothersome comportment on behalf of the Fleury family

8) the residents of Serrano XX have manifested to the doorman the Fleury family's unlikeliness to modify their troublesome lifestyle due to their "American nationality and customs"

9) If these activities persist, the building association in conformity with article 7.2 of la Ley de propiedad Horizantal 8/1/1999 will begin judicial proceedings to deprive the Fleury family of the occupancy of their apartment.

To the residents of Serrano XX: Have any of you opened the window or walked outside the front door lately? Because Calle Serrano is only being gutted and subjected to extremely loud construction noise from dawn 'til dusk due to the street's two-year municipal remodeling project.

Entrepreneur Diaries I - Pet Psychic

2009-04-02T03:08:00.001-07:00

To entertain old friends and colleagues and “épater l’industrie"…An entirely scabrous and fictional picaresque narrative chronicling the adventures of Case, a serial entrepreneur who falls victim to almost every fad in the tech industry.

…At some point in his life, Case decided that he was an ideas person. As such, he sought his fortune in the late twentieth century tech gold rush, with its promise of riches beyond belief, for enterprising, entrepreneurial fellows, such as he.

____________

In 1999, a chance acquaintance with a hippie chick at a bar gave Case the idea for his Dotcom. She was cute and he had nothing better to do. So, the following afternoon, he accompanied her to a seminar at the Mind Spirit and Body Center for Holistic Animal Health.

The seminar was led by a large muumuu-clad Earth Mother type—a pet psychic, or “animal communicator” as she preferred to be called. The incense was getting on his nerves and Chase was sure the animator was on to him, when she asked him why he seemed troubled during the group meditation. He had to think fast to come up with an alternative to the actual horrifying image he'd conjured up--that of being smothered in muumuu woman's ample breasts. However, just as he was planning his exit, she read a testimonial that piqued his interest.

Dear Gwendolyn:
During our session on October 5th, while talking with my cat Gandalph, you said that his spirit appeared as a Christmas tree. I couldn't believe it. Christmas was Gandalph's favorite time and he often slept under our tree.

One year, he brought in a mouse he had hunted and put it under the Christmas tree with all of the other presents. Because he loved Christmas so much, I put up his very own miniature Christmas tree on my nightstand in the bedroom.

Shortly after Gandalph's passing, the lights on the tree began burning so bright one night they actually woke me up and I touched one of the bulbs, burning my fingertip. The lights went out before I even unplugged it. I replaced the string of lights that evening. Thank you.…

As it turned out, Gwendolyn and her colleagues were eager to take their message to the Internet and Chase succeeded in borrowing money from his family to hire the two coders who responded to his ad on Craig’s List--Duane and Sanjay.

This was 1999, talent was scarce. Recruiting wasn’t exactly an option. You had to take what you could find, and even they might be picky. You had to sell them on the dream.

Case: So let me see, Duane, you actually worked at Pets.com, Wow! How was that?

Duane: Yeah man, it was great. We were gonna rule the world.

Case: So why exactly was it that you left?

Duane: My manager and I had differences of opinion about the strategic direction the business should take.

Case: Umh?

Duane: They wanted me to actually show up, Dude. Fucking slave drivers, can you believe it? Always on my back checking my code logs during my telecommute time. I’m a creative type, inspiration comes in bursts. You can’t control that man. I’m sure your psychic would know that.

Case: She’s a pet psychic.

Duane: Yeah, well whatever man.

Case: [meekly] Well, I’ll want you to show up.

Duane: It’s 1999 man, there’s the Internet. Heard of it? We telecommute. Anyway, that’s what’s on the table. Take it our leave it. [Breaks out a joint, lights up and takes a drag]. Want some?

Case: Er, no thank you.

Duane: Come on man, it’s very important to me that my employer understands my lifestyle. [Case reluctantly takes the joint, puffs and coughs]. If you don’t cough, you don’t get off.

Case: [turning to Sanjay] So Sanjay, do you have any questions about our business model?

Sanjay: Does your business model include an H1-B visa for me?

Case: Um yeah, sure.

Sanjay: I am not com-for-table with our target market. In Bangalore, nobody would pay to talk to their pet.

Case: Listen, Sanjay, this is America. There is an endless supply of fruitcakes out there.

Sanjay: What has this got to do with the Internet?

Case: Many of them are beginning to penetrate the online space in search of their own kind. The online human psychic market is pretty much cornered, but many of these people have pets. I tell you, the animal psychic market is ripe for picking. For the right person, that is. The kind of person who has the vision and the cojones to go out there and stake a claim.

PR at JBoss

2009-03-31T04:02:00.001-07:00

A little shout out to Chantal Yang who, along with Laura Kempke and Sarah Conway, was one of my main point people and the "professional" side of PR at JBoss.

For a little background, JBoss began a concerted effort at professional PR at the beginning of 2003, with what was a significant monthly retainer for us at the time. These three women worked for us, while at Schwartz Communications, where Laura Kempke has remained. Laura was the head person on our account for the duration of our contract and Sarah and, later, Chantal were our account managers. Chantal stayed with us until the end, even working for a year at RHT post-merger. Sarah and Chantal are now at Page One PR. I could not have worked at JBoss part-time and raised three children during my tenure there, without relying on the help of these three very capable women.

In this post, Chantal shares her opinion of what it was like working for us, and some of the factors that made PR a success at JBoss. She doesn't say it directly, but I'm sure she and her colleagues got plenty of "I can't believe you let them get away with saying that." The irony is we engaged Schwartz Communications based on one reference and one reference only--Miguel de Icaza and Ximian, which was getting a lot of publicity at the time (2002) for their OS project Mono, which Marc felt was completely irrelevant. Back then, you couldn't open a trade or business publication or read about an industry award without seeing Miguel's smiling face and an accompanying halo of flattering elogies--"diplomatic", "takes the high road," "Wants OS to succeed to help the third world," "Linux Savior"...and so on. We decided that we, too, wanted the "Miguel" PR treatment :)

It will take a PR genius to give to give you a product and a "voice" if you haven't got one, however, based on your project and community's maturity, the right PR team can do a lot towards analyzing and amplifying your message, and taking it to places you might otherwise not be able to reach.

Madrid blog--Marc and The Guardia Civil

2009-03-11T11:58:00.001-07:00

My husband has a known tendency to voice his opinions, without consideration for tact, preferably when this will incur negative reprisals, but this time he outdid himself. Marc had a run in with the Guardia Civil--Spain's federal paramilitary police. Although there's no US equivalent, Marc's experience would be familiar to any American who has driven through a rural county (as a non-local) and come upon the local state trooper welcoming committee.

The incident was banal enough. Marc got stopped for driving without his headlights on in the fog. Only, instead of taking down his name and address and sending him the bill, which is the normal procedure. The Guardia demanded cash, offering him a discount for “on the spot payment.” Since Marc was in the middle of nowhere, this entailed a drive to the nearest ATM machine in a village some kilometers away. The machine did not, however, dispense the exact change for the 105 euro fine. When he came back with the money, the Guardia told him they did not have change, and that he would have to drive back to the village and change his bill at a store. At this point, my husband lost patience, and decided that he’d rather give up 15 euros than waste any more time. He called the Guardia a “payaso” (clown) and handed over the 120 euros saying: “propina” (tip).

The predictable happened. My husband was handcuffed and driven to the sergeant, who eventually released Marc, writing up a citation for “insult to authority”--resulting in Marc’s court appearance today.

It turns out, poor as Marc’s judgment was, he wasn’t far off the mark. When the Guardia write up an official citation, resulting in a bill that you get in the mail, this money goes straight to “El Tesoro” the Treasury. However, your more enterprising Guardia can insist on cash and conveniently forget to mail in the official citation. Foreigners represent a convenient target for this income-enhancement operation. Due to the difficulty of collecting payment, they can insist on cash. However, by, denouncing my husband’s disrespect for authority, and sending a notice to Marc’s Madrid address, for his court date, the Guardia had to give up the cash and send it to “El Tesoro.” At the same time they opened themselves up for a parallel denunciation for improper protocol, since my husband is a legal resident of Spain. At what price honor?

In the end, Marc had to pay a 60 euro fine for “disrespect for authority,” which his lawyer argued down to 30 euros “due to his client’s unemployment.”

This was a lot better than my mother-in-law’s dismal prediction:

Mamita: “I don’t deserve such stress in my advanced years.”
Marc: “What are talking about?”
Mamita: “You’ll get AIDs.”
Marc: “How exactly is that going to come about?”
Mamita: They’ll throw you into jail. “Te van a dar por culo” (some "Deliverance" imagery), and you’ll wind up with AIDs!”

The moral is, if you legally reside in Spain and are the victim of one of these shake-down operations, insist on your right to mail in your fine and threaten to denounce them for improper procedure. Otherwise, regardless of where you are in the world, probably not a smart idea to insult a man with a little wee-wee, when that man is called “Authori-ta,” packs a gun, wears a uniform and you’re a foreigner.

Cult of the Damned, Vampires, Children and Literature

2009-02-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

Why put up with high school and family life when you can live in eternal bliss with your demon lover? This is the question posed by Stephanie Meyer’s "Twilight" series, which apparently is very popular among teenage girls—and their mothers.

My friend Abby has read it and offers the following critique: “I'm on book Three now, basically like watching crappy TV: a relaxing waste of time. The heroine, Bella, falls in love with the school bad boy: Edward, a vampire who is bad, but good at heart (albeit controlling and dominating). He is perfect at everything and she is human and flawed, but bless his little heart, he loves her anyway. Isn't that nice? It's so nice that Bella quickly decides she needs to become forever damned herself so she can leave her human life and be with him forever even though this sets a whole bunch of things into motion (four long books worth).

Stephenie Meyer clearly has read the classics and name drops stuff from Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice in an embarrassingly transparent way. But despite all the pages, the characters remain pretty flat. Bella isn't really torn that much about loosing her humanity she's just trying to figure out a way to get around the annoying obstacles that keep preventing her from experiencing eternal happiness with her stone cold lover.

The book trivializes life and glorifies the life of a bloodsucking vampire. They are all powerful and in Meyers’ novels there is very little drawback, so you don't understand why we don't all just become vampires. Unlike Wuthering Heights, their love is pretty straightforward love at first sight kind of stuff: He's hot so she likes him even though he's kind of a murderer.”

This sounds markedly different from the last vampire book I read, Anne Rice’s “Interview with The Vampire.” It was later turned into a movie in 1994, which I also enjoyed, despite the fact I am not a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt fan. As for the book, I agree with Wikipedia’s assertion that “the confessional tone, from the vampire's perspective, touching on existential despair and the sheer boredom of lifeless immortality” sets the book apart from its genre predecessors. The goth glamour is infused with, at least one the vampires, Louis’, genuine repugnance for the life he leads and the “love story” in the book is anything but conventional. Louis’ mentor/vampire companion, Lestat, creates a “daughter” for the pair, when they come upon the nearly lifeless child of a Plague victim. Over 65 years, the girl’s mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman forever trapped inside the body of a six-year old child, who comes to hate Lestat for what he has done to her. Rice also creates an intriguing ambiance, having done some research on the “period” elements of eighteenth century France and New Orleans.

According to Abby, Twilight is “like a “Dawson’s Creek” coven of vampires--campier and less thought-out than “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which prided itself on campiness. What is most disturbing, given the book’s target teen audience, is the heroine, Bella’s eagerness to drop everything for her glamorous coven 'family.’ This no doubt echoes the desperate search for acceptance that drives so many teenagers to become groupies or druggies, or otherwise give up themselves entirely, in order to join an "exclusive" group. She's just so thrilled that they will have her. As for the love story, not much depth there either. Whenever he touches her or kisses her she talks about how his perfect face makes her forget to breathe, how she can't stay angry at him and how she feels inadequate next to him. This isn't true love, this is the kind of infatuation girls felt for their posters of Kirk Cameron.”

Abby and I were discussing how gothic fluff like the “Twilight” series is ultimately far more disturbing than a book with an overtly sinister theme like Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Not only is Nabokov’s language light years ahead of Meyers’ in terms of depth and nuance, but the choice of narrator has a large impact as well. Despite giving her name to the title of the story, Lolita is essentially ambiguous, merely a repository for her captor’s fantasies. Given her young age, her mother’s death and her stepfather’s custody, it is not apparent that she willingly accepts the relationship with her captor. On the contrary, she runs away every chance she gets. Meanwhile, in “Twilight,” it only takes 20 pages of the first book, for Bella to realize she's in ‘luv’ with Edward, give up all consideration for herself, and decide she will do anything to be with him. By the third book, Bella is in some type of mortal danger (as usual) and the coven swarms around her to protect her with Edward her boyfriend/manager/father calling the shots. He makes decisions for her (in her best interest) and she rolls her eyes and complies. There's another character, Jacob, who is in love with Bella, but he's a werewolf. He fights with Edward over her and then ends up teaming up with him (to help control her and make decisions for her).”

Anyway, I found Abby’s email review of “Twilight” rather hilarious and thought I’d share it. Not sure I’d read any of the books myself, although, never say never because something that popular probably is distracting. Hopefully, the references to “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Romeo and Juliet” will inspire the series’ young readers to pick up these classics and discover a richer world, along with heroines who refuse to compromise their identity and values, or pay a real price for it, if they do.

I read my share of Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele as a schoolgirl—mostly because these books were readily available on my grandmother’s bookshelf, my maternal grandmother, I will say. My paternal grandmother tended to favor moderately more genteel historical romances, usually set in England or the American South. One day, as a fifth grader in the library of Christ the King parochial school, Sister Patricia Geary caught me reading Colleen McCullough’s “The Thornbirds,” a novel about an Australian woman who has an affair with a Catholic priest. Rather than making me feel bad about my reading selection, she simply said: “I can see our reading program must not be challenging you. I am starting a new reading class next year and I’d like to invite you to join.” Sister Patricia is my first memory of a truly great teacher. I joined her class the next year.”

Winter Garden, February 2009

2009-02-19T05:36:00.001-08:00

Thanks to my father for taking these pictures, from our garden in Atlanta. There is something I love about the delayed gratification of a garden. All these specimens were planted last Spring, and this is the first time they have bloomed for us. There is something so cheerful about plants that will flower during the dreary month of February. With the exception of the daffodils, these are all fragrant plants--all suitable for the Southeastern US.

Edgeworthia close-up

Edgeworthia in its container

Sweetbox

Daffodils

Cinnamon cindy camellias.

Madrid Blog--Caprichos I, Taxi Driver and Philosopher

2009-02-16T07:26:00.000-08:00

In 1799, Francisco Goya published a series of 80 prints titled “Caprichos.” Per the Diario de Madrid, the subject matter was chosen from

"... the multitude of follies and mistakes common in every civil society and from the vulgar prejudices and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or self-interest, those that he has thought most fit to furnish material for ridicule, and at the same time to exercise the artist’s imagination..."

The fact that I don’t drive in Madrid has altered my perceptions in daily life. Whereas, in Atlanta, the car provided a little climatized bubble transporting me, my music, my drive-through Starbucks decaf mocha and my progeny from one place to another; here I walk, take taxis, buses and the metro. This brings me into contact with all kinds of people, none of them from any exalted social, political or business plane. They do, however, have plenty to say.

Taxi Driver and Philosopher

Taxis in Madrid are plentiful, reasonably priced and most often driven by native Spaniards who know their way around. While few of them speak English, I will note that, I have never had a driver who didn’t speak Spanish. In the US, in contrast, English-speaking has been hit or miss the last few times I’ve taken a taxi there.

The Dueña claims that most taxi drivers she talks to belong to the Partido Popular (Spain’s conservative party). I am not sure I can generalize their political affiliations. What is true is that, in Spain, the taxi driver is an independent business owner, who most likely owns his own car and pays a large sum for his taxi license--around 100,000 euros, some part of which can be borrowed-- if I remember correctly.

Mostly, they listen to music or talk radio. This is not optional or tailored to the passenger’s preferences. The talk radio tends to fall into three categories, in descending order of popularity 1) “Futbol” (soccer) coverage, either live, if there’s a match, or, failing that, philosophical discussions of the goings on of various teams. In Madrid, that is almost always Real Madrid (pronounced “Ray-al” and meaning “royal”) 2) radio shows focusing on various depressing social themes such as a) our social values are falling apart—they young are no longer polite or b) unemployment—its devastating consequences or 3) “variety show” talk radio—jokes such as two Mexican prostitutes are talking. One of them asks the other what she asked Santa Claus for, for Christmas. The other one replies: “The usual--500 pesos plus the hotel room” or a whole episode devoted to the devastating consequences of cellulitis.

Occasionally I get one who’s in the mood to talk.

He notes that I am a foreigner and asks me what I do. I say that I am retired after selling my business two years earlier. I ask what the entrepreneurial climate is like in Spain.

“Entrepreneurial climate? Take fifty euros, bury them under a tree. Know what you get?”
“No”
“Thirty!”
“Señora, you need to understand that Spain is a Catholic country. It’s not like the protestant, Anglo-Saxon countries where work gives you some kind of value. You know what work is according to the Catholic interpretation of the Bible?”
“What?”
“A punishment from God.”
I mention that I read an article in the Financial Times, that the British are complaining because a Spanish conglomerate bought up their airports and has drastically reduced the seating in order to make room for more shops.
“Well, that’s the first time I ever heard of us owning anything of significance abroad.”

He points out the French ambassador’s residence as we are driving through the city. I thank him, but tell him I have never met the French ambassador, couldn’t tell you what his name is and that my only dealing with the French government abroad involves low-level civil “servants.”
He continues. “They say that the French ambassador was the mistress of Queen Isabel II of Spain and that he fathered, Alfonso XII. Well somebody had to. Her husband (her double-first cousin, Francisco de Asís de Borbón) was a homosexual.”
“Well I guess you got your fill of French kings anyway with Pepe Botella (the brother of Napoleon I and ruler of Spain during the French Empire) and later the Borbónes.
He says something else about the monarchy that I can’t remember.
I ask: “Were there any good kings or queens?”
He responds: “No, in my mind, they were all bad. Do you know why we have a king now?”
“No.”
“Because Franco gave us a king, that’s why. He didn’t have a son and was too machista to make his daughter his successor. He never asked the Spanish people whether this was what they wanted.”
“Oh.”

We pass a Starbucks.
He tells me: “When Starbucks first came to Spain, I said to myself, there is no way these stores will be a success. Who ever heard of a store that only sells coffee, where you can’t smoke a cigarette or order an alcoholic drink? It doesn’t make sense to us, you know. Why would you want to drink your coffee out of a cardboard cup and take it away, in the street. When we drink coffee, this should come in real ceramic cup, something that has weight to it. Plus, isn’t the point of drinking coffee, to sit down, linger and take a break? Hand it to the Americans to turn the coffee break into one more part of the to-go lifestyle.”

The God of Carnage/The Queen of Love and Beauty

2009-02-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

I just missed Yazmina Reza’s play “Le Dieu du Carnage” (Un Dios Salvaje) in Madrid. The premise sounds hilarious.

From Wikipedia: the play is about two pairs of parents. The child of one couple hurt the other at school, so the parents meet up in order to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childlike, resulting in the whole evening going into chaos.

From the Times Online (commenting on London performance): …All the characters are unheard. Nobody gives the other person time. It’s an accurate assessment of where we’re at. There’s a real urge...to hear the word “sorry”, but nobody is willing to say it out loud because of the litigious hand that hangs over everyone now… You take two children having a fight - who says sorry to whom, and whether they should or not - and you blow that up to their parents and beyond that to any political argument. We live in a therapy culture. Nobody is at fault. But if nobody’s at fault, then nobody takes responsibility.

For those of you how live in (or are traveling to NYC), it’s set to open there, and will star Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden. I like the sub-header—“A Comedy of Manners…Without the Manners.”

I would have liked the theme anyway, but the irony is that something like that (though in no way, taken to those exaggerated levels) actually happened to me.

My oldest and, for 3 ½ years, only--child is a girl, The Queen of Love and Beauty. She is affectionate, used to have exquisite manners, still has a sly wit and a head full of blond curls. When she was younger, I dressed her in Liberty floral smocks, taught her to speak French, and took her on business trips with me. People who met the Queen congratulated me. I would look upon other people’s horrid children, and feel sorry for them. Verily, verily, the Creator looked down on my pride. And he was not pleased. He gave me three sons to teach me a lesson. And now, I’m not so pleased. The glare of other people’s judgment burns my cheeks, and the person I sometimes feel sorry for is me.

But, back to the Queen…I looked at the world and saw that it was rough place. Determined that the Queen should have advantages, I saw to it, that in addition to her schoolwork, she studied dance, so that she should acquire grace, and martial arts so that she could defend herself. So, imagine my surprise, when one day, when she was in second grade, a school administrator phones to tell me that my daughter has been struck on the face, by a boy in her class. I am taken aback. It’s not just that my daughter has taken three years of martial arts, it’s the fact that the boy who struck her is a light-weight. My daughter could take that child down in a second if she wanted to.

I asked her what had happened. There was no provocation. She said she saw the first blow coming and blocked it. This took him by surprise and he came back at her even harder with his other fist, which took her by surprise. And he hit her.

“And what next?”
“I called the playground monitor, and reported what happened, just like they taught me in the “How to deal with bullies” class in karate.
“Oh.”

The playground monitor saw everything. The school reacted by suspending the boy for a day, since he had a prior record of that kind of behavior. The boy’s parents made him call and apologize. My daughter didn’t give the incident a second thought.

But I did. I restrained myself, but what I really wanted to tell my daughter was, “Honey, the next time somebody lays a hand on you, you take him down. You ruin the little twerp, so he thinks better before trying something like that again. Clearly my daughter is more mature than I am.

It wasn’t just the boy’s behavior that bothered me, it was the phone conversation I had with his mother before his forced apology. His mother had some sort of executive job with a title like “corporate responsibility” at a multi-national corporation. She said something like “Well I’m very disappointed in Little Twerp’s behavior, but you know how he and your daughter like to tease each other.”

I didn’t really know how to process what she said. Her son and my daughter had been friends in kindergarten, but hadn’t interacted much since that time. I wondered what part of “tease” involved striking a person on the face. It sounded as if she was dismissing extremely inappropriate behavior, making it sound as if this had been “mutual,” a simple childish flirtation. After all, “children will be children.”

But then I remembered a story my sister told me about a boy she liked in first grade. She said that she really didn’t know what to do at the time, so she ran straight into him and knocked him down. My sister was a bruiser and the boy was never tall. Not tall, but definitely charming. I remember a picture of my sister and that boy, smiling and sitting together in the branches of the oak tree in our back yard. They were teenagers, then, and still friends. Sadly, he worked for that financial company that had their headquarters in the World Trade Center. He later died in 911.

And, I wondered, maybe I was being over-sensitive, taking a childhood situation and completely contextualizing it in an adult, feminist perspective. That, being said, I am glad to say that, whatever grief my boys have given me, and that includes one year of 3-yr old preschool when I got lots of “Oops I forgot to be nice to my friends” notes--they have never, ever hit a girl.

Two of my friends had this advice: 1) When “situations” arise between your child and another child, call that child’s parent and say: “I would like to speak to ‘the aggressor child’.” Ask their child to come to your house and apologize, in person, to your child. 2) If the situation involves boy-girl aggression (this is from a friend whose buxom 8th grade daughter received some unwelcome comments from a male classmate): have your husband call the boy’s father and discuss with him. They will all take this more seriously.

La Guerra de las Galaxias

2009-02-04T05:06:00.000-08:00

I do take my children to more “cultural” activities, I really do, but last weekend, I needed a family outing, to which I could actually convince my husband to accompany me, that also takes into account the fact that I have two six year old boys. They are interested primarily in two things—fast vehicles, fighting and weapons.

So, thus, we found ourselves at Star Wars the Exhibition in Madrid last Saturday. Unfortunately, all the places for Jedi school had already been filled up until later in the evening. Naturally, this invalidated all our bribes of the morning—“If you don’t stop fighting with your brother, pick up your clothes, brush your teeth, etc. You won’t be going to Jedi school. Only the worthy padawans make it to Jedi status, and so on...If you plan to attend this exhibit with your children, reserve ahead for Jedi school.

I honestly wasn’t expecting much, maybe some old props or vintage 1970s Star Wars dolls, but actually the exhibition was very well put together. What impressed me the most, was how much more money, resources, and technology had been poured into telling you the story of the fictitious world of the six Star Wars movies, than a really good exhibit like King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. The latter was acceptable to the boys because it involved mummies and tombs; we saw it the last time we were in Atlanta. Sadly, the boys know far more about Tatooine than they do about Egyptian antiquity.

As far as what was interesting to me, as an adult, two things really—the concept drawings for the movies produced by various illustrators, miniature set mock-ups and the story boards where you see the stage and filming directions (High angle camera, “Darth Vader falls into the void”) with a corresponding cartoon like-drawing. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into the creative process that produced at least 2 (in my mind) masterpieces. And even if the prequel movies weren’t my cup of tea (nor “Return of the Jedi” after age 15 or so), I still had to admire the creativity and ingenuity that went into producing all those special effects and stunning visuals--quirky little details such as the fact that falling grains of salt mimic falling water, which is how they filmed the “waterfall” on Princess Amidala’s home planet.

What I did not anticipate was the ambush on the way out.

Unfortunately, it did not occur to me to negotiate with my husband how we were going to get past the gift store. My husband and I have different philosophies on various issues of parenting. I remember, as a child, feeling that a battery-operated light-up light sabre (that I didn’t have) was probably the one thing standing between me and official Jedi-hood. However, later, as an adult, I decided that delayed gratification and having to work for things might not have been so bad. My parenting ambition at this point is to “Not raise brats.”

I had my line ready: “Your treat was getting taken to this exhibit. As for the gift store, you’ll get nothing and like it.”

My husband’s approach, on the other hand, tends towards “What would I have wanted as a six year old?” A big ass light sabre, the Clone Wars 2.5 blu-ray, the Clone Warrior costume with better quality made-in-China mask (as opposed to the one that rips apart after two wearings), the latest Star Wars PS videogame and so on. Forget that my boys have already broken 4 “official” Star Wars light sabers whose technological bells and whistles put my 1970s desiderata to shame. Forget that they already have 2 clone warrior costumes and one Darth Vadar costume (albeit with the cheapy masks that didn’t last).

At some point, the children realized they were going to get some of what they wanted, but not everything. Witness the power of the Dark Side taking over. My three older children, who are tolerable on an individual basis, have been known to descend into the worst sort of snarling, yelping wolf pack behavior when together, preferably at moments calculated to produce maximum embarrassment to their parents. They starting tearing around the store, wildly pointing to things, letting out howls of “I Waaaaaaaaan’t” and fighting among each other, assuming that whatever the one got was going to subtract from the other’s loot. In short, complete mayhem. I have never been so ashamed. Meanwhile, the Spanish children at the store stood quietly waiting in line to get the 1 euro pen or 10 euro souvenir book their parents had promised them.

Afterwards, I discussed this with a friend, whose parenting philosophies I admire. She had the following good advice for how to handle the gift store ambush next time. “Give them each a budget of 10 euros at the store. That way they learn what things cost and, if they want something that’s worth more, they have to work together and decide how they’re going to pool their resources.”

The Secret Life of Bourgeois Women

2009-02-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

We are having lunch with the Dueña at the Barril de Arguelles. We’ve come to that part of a lazy Spanish lunch, the kind that I don’t take very often, that starts at 2:20pm and ends at 5:30pm, the point where you’ve finished the coffee, and you aren’t quite ready to go. You’ve moved on to the fortified alcohol.

My husband is discussing the lifestyle change involved in moving from suburban America (Atlanta) to life in the more urban part of Madrid. “My wife is outside the apartment from morning until the afternoon. I don’t know what she does all day. I suspect she has a lover.”

The Dueña belongs to a Spanish generation that made the transition from the rigid post-Civil War era to the freewheeling post-Franco era, where, as my husband put it: “They had to close down the local titty bar in Puetro Pollensa because you could see the same thing for free on the beach.” Spanish cultural background aside, the Duena is familiar to me, if I am not to her. I grew up with women like her--well-bred women of a certain age whose demeanor of outward respectability concealed a very sly, wicked sense of humor. Nursing her shot glass of hierba, the Dueña replies “Pues, hace bien.” (Well then, more power to her) My husband, who had been looking to this older female figure to reinforce his disapproval of possibly wayward women, is silenced.

What is the wife in question, who is sitting there, quietly listening to all this, thinking? She reads a lot. She thinks about nineteenth century literature—novels like Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, where men write about what they would do if they were a well-heeled, married woman with a certain amount of leisure time on their hands. They inevitably come to the same conclusion: Adultery!

If she had felt more awake, hadn’t consumed some hierba herself, or felt the need to impress anybody with how witty and urbane she was, she might have offered the kind of response the comment deserved: “Why there’s a pleasant idea, I hadn’t thought of. Now I’m going to enjoy a little reverie interviewing all the candidates.” But mostly she wonders, herself...

What is it that she does all day?

In the business dinners she attended with her husband, people were generally too well-bred to ask her that question. They don’t need to. They’ve already sized her up. They ask her a few polite questions about her children, and move on to truly exciting topics involving what currently is hot in technology, who’s making the most money, who’s killing it with market share and industry buzz.

She asks herself. What is it that she does all day?

She makes lists. These lists involve transfers of money, faxes to be signed and sent, invoices to be paid for her husband’s new company, a check to be written for the annual fund of the children’s old school, wrangling with the phone company, figuring out why a service has not been activated on her husband’s new cell phone; she signs for a letter, duly notes an appointment on her calendar, tries to remember if this is sport’s week at her boys’ school, which means that they need to wear their PE uniforms the first three days instead of on their regular PE days. She goes to the bank to get cash to pay the people who work for them and to the post office to mail things. If it’s the holiday season, unusual things have to be procured for the boys’ Christmas Play—one boy needs a reindeer headband, “un diadema de rena.”

She was proud of herself for finding a costume shop and wading through the naughty nurse and dominatrix costumes until she actually found what she was looking for…until she got to the play and her son told her that all the other boys’ mothers got them headbands with red bells on them and that his reindeer headgear, a cheap felt made-in-China production, already has a lop ear where one of the other boys pulled on it. Her daughter attends the French Lycee, where there are no Christmas plays, but they do have strike days that have to also be duly noted on the calendar.

Some days it’s a wild goose chase where she goes to three different ministry buildings looking for the elusive Form 790 for a friend who has used to live in Spain and needs it for immigration. The friend gently notes in her email that that she also asked somebody else for help with this, but the ministry is only open in the morning and the other woman “has a job.” When She finally gets to the security line to enter the ministry and is trying to keep track of the gate-keeper’s explanation of how much tax must be paid, where to mail the form back, and some special certification that is required for the accompanying passports, she notices a giant poster with block letters against a yellow square: “Ahora todo es mas simple.” (Now everything is simpler).

She feels so weak after riding in taxis and the metro, that a cup of chocolate con churros at “Maestro Churreria” seems divine. She soon regrets this when she starts to feel queasy during the taxi ride to her daughter’s school in the suburbs, time she uses to take on the phone company and their nine levels of automated voice menus, en route to deliver the swim bag that has been forgotten that day, note to self—Tuesday is swim day. She had briefly considered not taking an hour out of the day to go to the school and back so that her daughter might “learn a lesson in responsibility” but decides that aforementioned daughter’s conduct has been improving lately and, thus, deserves a break.

She gets home, gets on the computer and Skype rings. She has forgotten that it’s a Tuesday afternoon and thus the one two-hour slot a week, where she works on the play with her friend back in Atlanta. They decompress, talk about their week, the scandals and corruption with the TARP distribution in the US. She remembers that she met John Thain, at a New York Stock Exchange holiday photo op with The Former Employer—the entity that purchased her company. The Former Employer, like, the Ministry, had a mandatory decorating scheme that included lots of self-congratulatory posters. They were also very proud of their record on Ethics. At orientation/integration day they handed out red Frisbees with the words “Ethics!” printed on them. They talked to her and her colleagues with the patronizing tone and distaste that adults reserve for wayward children who 1) will not be able to understand the complexity of their lofty ideals 2) if left to their own devices, will defecate all over them. Sure enough, somewhere in the memorabilia drawer of the basement, there was a picture of her husband, the company officers and beetle-eyed, non-blinking John Thain.

I tell my friend: “I’ve met an infamous Personage.”
She’s non-plussed: “Get over yourself. There’s a lot of those people out there, at this moment.”
I persist: “I know, but he’s publicly known and I’ve got a picture. Think I should upload it to Facebook?” which makes us laugh.

We maybe get one hour of actual progress made on the play. It feels painstaking, but we’re moving forward. We’re on the last act now and our deadline for finishing and editing is the end of the children’s school year. Then the children come home, there’s dinner to be thought about, homework to be supervised, notes to teachers to be written. One day rolls into the next.

My husband’s comment that December lunch makes me think of Belle de Jour—a 1967 Luis Buñuel-directed movie, starring the young Catherine Deneuve as a respectable upper-middle class woman with an alternative life. One of my former male bosses loved that movie (not a boss from The Former Employer, I note. Their human resources department, which boasted an incentive program called “Brave New World,” would have frowned on such discourse as a Title VII risk). Back to “Belle de Jour” It’s a good movie, if you like foo-foo arty movies, or you happen to be interested in the theme above. I liked the movie. For that matter, I used to enjoy reading the “Belle de Jour” blog. She was a good writer. I absently wonder if subject matter like “Diary of London call girl” is what it takes to achieve Guardian “Blog of the Year” status.

Dimitri the Stud

2009-01-26T01:54:00.000-08:00

Recently came across the "Dimitri the Stud" message supposedly left on a woman's work voicemail. The "elegant" lady in question caught Dimitri's attention after a chance two-minute public meeting. Whether real or fake, this is one of the funniest audios I've listened to in a long time. Supposedly the "real" Dmitri is actually from Toronto and runs a website called Dmitri the Lover. There, for a price, he offers men advice on how to improve their game in the dating scene.

Andy Oliver and I had a chuckle about the advice giving business. "That's awesome. So he's an expert....yet "very single"... Reminds me of our field. Lots of advice from people who are not actually good at whatever it is they are doing :-)"

Tina Fey Golden Globes Speech

2009-01-21T03:58:00.000-08:00

Just another reason why Tina rocks.

...I want you to really know how lucky I am to have the year I've had this year and, if you ever start to feel too good about yourself, they have this thing called the Internet! You can find a lot of people there who don't like you! I'd like to address some of them now! BabsonLacrosse, you can suck it. DianeFan, you can suck it. Cougar Letter, you can really suck it 'cause you've been after me all year...

I'd like to see a "True Confessions of a Hater" blog entry someday, myself. More specifically, I'd like to know what is so satisfying about nurturing an online hate obsession with somebody you've never met, or a product you wouldn't condescend to use.

Tina's right--message board anonymity is undoubtedly a factor. She's also right when she says the the moment you register to a comment board to respond, you've become even crazier than they are. Then there's the simple fact that, on the Internet, extreme voices get heard. I once read about something called the Howard Dean phenomenon. This was not a theory about Dean's popularity, but a theory on how Dean's popularity got overestimated. The theory is that the more extreme voices get all the Google mojo, whereas the majority audience falls into the more moderate and silent, "lurker" category.

Why do people get targeted? With "relative" degrees of finesse, the hater would respond "because you are an jerk and your product suckz." On a more thoughtful level, an Australian (who would one day happily betray us, himself) once told me about something called the "Tall Poppy Syndrome." The Tall Poppy Syndrome says that the desire to whack down to size any person or entity that tries to stand out from the crowd is human nature, as is the tendency to criticize them as being presumptuous, attention seeking, or without merit.

We had our fair share of these people in the JBoss days. The successful hater develops a respected position in the online community, coming to be viewed as a stand-up guy. He gets credibility for having no stake in the subject of his rants. He excels at strategies like writing about 10 flaws in your product. Of these 10 flaws, only one will have any real merit. Try in vain to point out that 9/10ths of Joe Hater's argument is patently false, he and his posse will hone in on the one weakness he has identified, with the rationale that if they were right about that, they must be right about everything else. Ignore the hater or engage him, it's a lose-lose proposition. Ignore him and he and his posse will declare victory: your failure to respond must mean that you are tacitly admitting everything he says is right. Engage him and he starts sharpening his teeth: ah ha, if you bother to respond this must because you are on the defensive.

I turn 37 and...

2009-01-19T08:29:00.001-08:00

...get my own blog!

Thanks to Marc and Andy Oliver for hosting my previous blogs, and for helping get this one set up. My previous LinuxIntegrators posts to come. I will continue to cross-post on Maison Fleury, as well.

A new year, new address, new friends, re-acquaintance with old friends, and more progress on my play.

Thank you to everybody who sent me birthday wishes.

Un abrazo,
Nathalie

Viewing Habits: "House"

2009-01-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

Recently, Marc and I have been watching television series by dvd, or, when we catch up: iTunes, years after the original seasons come out. Given our limited time (evenings when the kids are in bed), we would rather sacrifice hipness for enough feedback on the show to justify the commitment. We used to watch more movies. The problem is it requires a lot of research to not completely waste your time there, given the high proportion of duds and formula flicks churned out every year.

A good television series, on the other hand, is a known quantity. Once you wind up investing the time getting to know the characters and getting caught up in the story arc, you'll even put up with the filler episodes, hoping for the eventual plot development crumb. It's sort of like catching up with an old friend. You may not always have much to say to each other, but there's a reassuring comfort in your shared experience.

House

You've got to love a series based on a misanthropic diagnostician, who believes everybody is a liar. When some guest character meets House for the first time, the character remarks: "You must be really good at what you do, because, with your winning personality, nobody would tolerate you ten seconds, if you weren't." If American society weren't so anesthetized with political correctness, it might not be such a vicarious thrill to dwell on a character who hasn't been conditioned not to say what he thinks.

Great character development aside, what really made the series work was tightly-written episode-specific narrative--any random episode could be enjoyed out of the series and season context...plus the overall story arc was compelling enough to keep you coming back. Unfortunately, that all changed after Season 3, when House fired his whole team. The original team of Cameron, Chase and Foreman had relative depth; there was tension and chemistry among those three and House.

I simply didn't buy into the contest/Survivor twist that House uses to get the new team in Season 4. Kutner, Taub and "Thirteen" are very loosely written, pastiches almost. There is little tension among these three and House, and their interaction tends to be sitcom predictable. Meanwhile, the steam has gone out of House's long-time friendship with Wilson. After everything House has done to Wilson, it simply is not believable that these two are still friends. It would appear the writers feel this too--this relationship has also become sit-commy and is limping along.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm basically holding on to see if House and Cuddy will get together. Now romantic tension is the bread and butter of these long-running series, especially with the female element like me, that is routing for them to finally act on their latent attraction and hop in the sack (and then get married and have lots of babies:) I'm also aware of David Mamet (the the first person I read who verbalized this in "Bambi vs. Godzilla")'s rule for love stories: the plot tension does not come from what brings these two people together (presumably they are relatively young and attractive), but what keeps them apart. However, in House and Cuddy's case, enough is enough. There's a certain amount of House sabotaging this relationship that I'm willing to tolerate and attribute to the Imp of the Perverse or some cowardly instinct where a known misery is better than grasping at happiness and losing and it. Nevertheless, this has become such a staple of the more recent seasons of the show that it's starting to become a mechanical, tired old tease.

As for the episodic mini medical plots a la Sherlock Holmes (thus the much commented on House/Wilson, Holmes/Watson parallel), I was always afraid to ask any doctor acquaintances what they felt about the show for fear of having an expert dismiss my fun little rendez-vous with "House" as a vulgar distraction for the ignorant masses. However, from the point of view of somebody with no medical background, I wonder if they aren't running out of good story lines. The episode opens so often with the same Scooby Doo set-up--it's not the character you think who will fall deathly ill--that it's become a cliche. Also, I'm finding my self less able to follow (theoretically) the diagnostic path leading to the discovery of the true medical culprit, not to mention the patient soap operas seem less interesting, as of lately.

On the other hand, one consequence of the show, due to the rare nature of some of these diseases (in non-tropical, first world countries), is the acquisition of some rare phobias about un-pasteurized cheeses, lurking tape-worms and stagnant water in fountains. I carry an epi-pen in case of asthmatic reaction, which, in my case, has only happened in a doctor's office as a consequence of allergy shots. However, I'm jut waiting for the right case of life-threatening anaphylaxis to wield it heroically.

JBoss: Behind the Headlines?

2009-01-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

For those of you who suggested I write a "JBoss: Behind the Headlines" novel, thanks for the vote of confidence. There are a lot of great stories there. However, relying solely on our little company to paint a picture of the software environment and entrepreneurial experience in the late 90s, pre-recessionary 2000s is over-reaching. A novel that captured an era would involve getting a lot of other people to tell me their stories, other companies, other exits, the VC perspective, the IPO experience (which is dead for now), the bankers, the customers, the corporate competitors... research and interviews I don't have the energy to do.

I could, however, be tempted to draw on my JBoss experiences to write a blog entry-format satire of the corporate IT and entrepreneurial world my former colleagues and I came from. Think something along the lines of Lucy Kellaway's Martin Lukes saga in the FT. My time and writing constraints favor an episodic story flow, with the ability to go forward and backward in time and introduce a varied cast of characters, a la the television series "Lost." I see this as being a story in the picaresque genre.

From Wikipedia:

The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society.

Being a lazy academic and person whose professional experience grew out of the collaborative environment of open source (get other people to do your work for you for free!), I welcome story ideas and collaborative suggestions from my readers, by comments or email (nathaliemfATgmailDOTCOM). Let me know which themes and characters you want to hear about.

The Open Source Developer's Wife

2009-01-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

When I was active in public relations for our software company, JBoss, I sometimes found myself in the awkward position of being mistaken for an engineer. Trying to engage in an elaborate discussion of how X works with me is pretty much equivalent to doing a strip-tease for a blind person. I don't care so much how X works; I'm more interested in what X can do for me. I'm not an engineer, I'm just married to one.

My 37th birthday is coming up and what I'd like most is for my husband to set up a separate blog for me on Blogger, archiving my posts on "Maison-Fleury" (I'll continue to cross-post on this blog), and my previous blog, "Objective Correlative, Confessions of a Wayward Academic and Would-be Propagandist," from Andy Oliver's Linux Integrators.

For his recent 40th birthday, Marc, dear old fashioned gentleman that he is, suggested I get a pair of DD, stripper-grade knockers. I declined. Ironically, it is going to be a lot harder for me to get blog help, than any sort of outrageous thing I could ask him to buy. He hates and resents being used as tech support, by the family. This results in the following sort of scenario: the children are threatening to spontaneously combust because their Disney movie won't play.

"Darling, could you please fix the DVD?"
"What are you going to do for me?"
"What I'm going to do for you is get your children to stop screaming."

Early in our marriage, I got an inkling of things to come. We lived in a studio apartment in Paris and were finishing our graduate degrees. We somehow had enough money to buy a Compaq computer. Soon, to my horror, my husband had gone off to the FNAC and bought himself some sort of dubious looking Linux distribution from a company named Keops or Cyclops. The guts of the computer were splayed across the carpet because he had decided to partition it, and all I could think was that he had completely invalidated our warranty and how in the hell was I going to write my master's thesis if that thing didn't work.

At the height of the tech boom and before JBoss, we lived in Silicon Valley. We had ordinary corporate jobs, and then Marc had an unsuccessful first company. Rent was high and there was a moment when our landlord sold our apartment. We had a fifty-pound bull terrier and our previous nothing special 1 1/2 bedroom apartment in Foster City, which I felt was ridiculously over-priced at $1700 was now going for something like $2200 a month and they wouldn't accept pets anymore. I wondered where we had gone wrong because it was impossible to find a place to rent and even more impossible to find a place that would take a 50 pound dog, and a place that will force you to give up your dog is a place that will suck the soul out of you. I was grateful to move to Atlanta. Silicon Valley felt like an industry town. It was rare to run into anybody who didn't work in software and everybody was comparing themselves and seeing how you measured up (which we didn't).

When we founded JBoss, we were young. We literally had nothing to lose. Marc complained a lot about work. At the time, it didn't seem like such a big risk to leave a corporate job. Anybody in the industry with reasonable skills (or without) could find an equivalent un-fulfilling job several months later, if things didn't pan out. I figured that nine months was reasonable to see if we could cover our expenses, expenses which became a lot lighter when we moved in with my parents.

In the early days I took care of the legal documents, accounting, setting up trainings, our economic life-blood for the first year or so, and basically dabbled in everything else that did not involve engineering. When we moved to Atlanta, our daughter was two. Initially I was going to look for part-time work and help Marc out with JBoss just until "things got off the ground." It quickly became apparent that no other job would provide me the flexibility, fun and pay-off we were seeing in JBoss.

Sales is one thing I've never been good at or enjoyed. We were fortunate enough to have our customers come to us and tell us what they wanted, but it soon became apparent we were leaving a lot of opportunities on the table, for lack of resources. it was a relief when we could hire Ben Sabrin. Having a full-time salesperson really paid off for us. The increased revenues also meant that I could concentrate more on public relations, which I headed until we sold JBoss to Red Hat. Before we had a marketing budget, we had a PR agency and a significant (for us) monthly PR retainer. However, PR, especially in a field like middleware, doesn't work in a vacuum. You have to have a product, customers and a story.

People used to ask us if were cash-flow positive. We couldn't have afforded to be anything else, having lost what savings we had in a previous unsuccessful company. With JBoss, we kept overhead under control, working mostly with consultants until our VC investment made it possible to hire more employees.

What is it like to work with your spouse? Maybe what made it work for us is that we've always worked in different fields, which minimizes the opportunities for friction. The downside of working with your spouse, when you're passionate about what you do, is that the borders between your personal and work life are very thin. We had to make an effort not to talk about work all the time. One day, I read a BusinessWeek article about my husband and JBoss that began with this "La-dee-dah, let's take a look at the demented Fleury family where their six year old daughter talks about whether or not IBM is after them on a Sunday morning" intro. I had gotten used to a certain amount of negative personal attacks in the online media, but it was very painful to have my children brought up in that context.

Selling the company was very hard. I don't think people can appreciate that unless they've done it. The attitude can be--just take your big ass divorce settlement and move on. However, when you're a creative person, it's difficult to give up control. You feel like you've sold your child upriver. JBoss had a very distinctive personality. We spent five years of our life building that company and were very close to so many of the people with whom we worked. We'd lived through a real roller coaster ride together. The difference between something and nothing can turn on a dime. You have a window of opportunity and you need to seize it. You need to make sure that all the struggles weren't for nothing and that you reward the people who've been loyal to you.

Back when we were struggling, I would occasionally run into or read about the Dot Com success stories. I remember thinking how these people were so full of themselves, so convinced that they had worked harder and were smarter than everybody else. The truth is that anybody with an ounce of perspective knows people who are smarter and have worked harder than themselves, people that didn't make it because the timing wasn't right or because of circumstances beyond their control.

We've been very lucky. In this New Year, I look back and am truly grateful for the opportunity we had, for the people we got to know and work with, and for the fun times we had together.

Book Review: The Sum of Our Days, by Isabel Allende

2009-01-14T04:34:00.000-08:00

I just finished Isabel Allende's "The Sum of Our Days" (La Suma de los Dias), an autobiographical novel, focusing mostly on the past fifteen or so years of her life in Marin County, California. Since the last thing I read by Isabel was "Eva Luna," many years ago, I was surprised to learn, in a FT interview with Richard Waters, that Isabel has been in California for a while now. I was intrigued enough to buy the book. "The Sum of Our Days" appears to be the continuation of a dialogue with her deceased daughter, Paula, begun in a book of the same name that I have not read.

Since one of the challenges of my life is trying to find a balance between writing and raising four young children, I'm always interested in autobiographical material by authors I like. Mostly I want to know where they get their inspiration and how they find time for their writing. In Isabel's case, it's clear that a lot of this material comes from her own life and the lives of her friends. Some of this drama, you'd be hard pressed to invent, such as the story of her drug-addicted step-daughter's surprise pregnancy, resulting in a delivery in where the the obstetrician has to simultaneously save a premature baby and detox the child, or getting a call during a vacation in India where she learns that her daughter-in-law has run off with her stepson's fiance.

One funny anecdote is her Chilean family's horrified reaction when she uses them for inspiration in her first novel "The House of the Spirits" (her grandmother apparently did dabble in spiritualism; her grandfather was not a rapist and murderer). They only reconciled themselves with the novel when it became a major Hollywood movie, with well-known stars, at which point they decided that Isabel's fictionalized story was their true family history.

She talks frankly about trying the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca to overcome writer's block, her quest to find and vet a future wife for her son, taking the unsuspecting woman with her on a trip to the Amazon, discusses the highs and lows of her marriage and her time in counseling, her failings as a mother-in-law (she finally has to throw away the key to her son and daughter-in-law's house because she is always popping in unannounced), and her unconventional assembled family, her "tribu" (or tribe). Having enjoyed her fiction, it was nice to learn more about this woman who comes across as amazingly cool on a personal level, in spite of...or more likely, because of the self-awareness with which she discusses her own foibles, an attitude that enables her to appreciate and accept other people, despite their imperfections.

She places strong emphasis on family, especially extended family or the self-elected family of truly close life-long friends. Such an outlook no doubt appears claustrophobic and retrograde in contemporary American culture, with its emphasis on the nuclear family and individualism. However, in Isabel's case, she apparently has a magnetic enough personality (and it comes across in her writing) that "the tribu" includes people like her husband's stepson from a former marriage, her former son-in-law (widower of the deceased daughter), who moves from Spain to the US and moves into her old house, five minutes away, with his new wife and their twin daughters...and lots of other interesting characters.

The anecdote that served as a cautionary tale for me was her story of an encounter with a dentist she meets at a cocktail party. When the dentist learns that she writes novels for a living, he replies that he'd like to write a novel when he retires. The rather defensive Isabel responds that she'd like to extract molars when she retires, referring to the fact that she spends ten hours a day sitting down in front of her computer screen agonizing over word choice, and that writing, for most people who do it well, takes a lot of dedication and large chunks of uninterrupted time.

This makes me think of a conversation I had with a good friend over Christmas. She is trying to talk me into reading Malcom Gladwell's new book: "Outliers, The Story of Success." If you any of you have read Malcolm Gladwell, please tell me what you think he's worth. I've only seen an interview of him on the Daily Show--I'm slightly suspicious of fashionable, media-savvy intellectuals, afraid they'll be innately shallow. Supposedly they ought to be suffering and under-appreciated, right?. Well, anyway, my friend was telling me about Malcolm (or whoever else he filched it from)'s 10,000 hour rule where supposedly anybody can get really good at something if they spend 10,000 hours doing it. I'm not completely convinced that is true. Or maybe it's because, by that metric I'm really behind in my writing career, or I've just gotten distracted along the way.

Madrid blog--Different Perspectives on Medicine

2008-12-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

House-calls

One of my most pleasant surprises here in Madrid is the discovery of a pediatrician who not only gives you his cell phone number (that he picks up), but who will make house-calls. With four children, one of whom is in his first year of preschool, can I say what a life-saver this is.

Dr. J is probably way over-specialized to be dealing with my children's flus and sniffles (he's also a neonatologist), however, he never makes me feel bad when I call him, even one time when the school secretary sent my daughter home saying she had conjunctivitis and it turned out to be a pimple on her eyelid. I am under no illusions that tending to my progeny's medical needs has much to do with what he studied in medical school, however since the morning portion of his work is related to social-security and making the rounds of day-cares, I feel like a relative prize--something along the lines of Mrs. Pumphrey with her pampered lap dog Tricky Woo from the BBC series "All Creatures Great and Small," about a Yorkshire veterinarian in pre-war England. Or, at least someone who pays full cash fees for quick and easy work. On that note, I need to think of Christmas present to send to the nice Dr. J. to express my gratitude to him.

The Great American Medical Factory

I really like my children's pediatrician in the US, but his office, part of a multi-doctor practice, feels like Grand Central Station. He's a good doctor, very in demand. To make an appointment with him for something like an annual check-up requires a minimum of six weeks advance notice. The children have to be really sick for me to be motivated to take them in because this requires a drive to a medical building with inconvenient parking, followed by a 45 minute wait with a bunch of other snotty-nosed children. You wonder what they're there for, and hope you won't be back in the office one week later with something far worse than the original illness. The American medical visit is truly a triumph of process engineering, with its supporting army of receptionists, medical techs, lab technicians, nurses, back office accounting and insurance professionals, its shiny medical buildings, disposable paper covers for examination tables, in-house testing with immediate results and its various protocols. By the time you go through the whole experience, the doctor is the person with whom you will spend the least amount of time.

I have the television series House, especially the clinic duty segments, to thank for the uncompromising vision of exactly how our doctors must view us: an endless procession of whiny patients with the same uninteresting complaints. Every time, Dr. W patiently explains the same thing to me. "Mrs. Fleury pretend that this is 1907 and I'm here with my little black attache case. There is nothing I can do for your child: it's a virus." I reply: "Yes, but he's had this for more than two weeks and he's not getting better," to which he replies: "He probably caught a second virus." Meanwhile, he's got some urgent communication from the nurse, which, from the little I can gather, involves a diagnostic tour de force along the line of "sarcoidosis with Colonel Mustard in the Billiard Room."

First Madrid experience, in the Office of Dr. "R. G. de L."
Same flus and colds, same forty-five minute wait with snotty-nosed kids, different hours, different decor.

Before I discovered Dr. J., I used to take the children to another doctor, whose name I got out of the health insurance booklet. Dr. "R.G. de L." is the only pediatrician in our neighborhood on our private health insurance plan (everybody else they will re-imburse at 80%). His hours are from 5pm to 9:30pm. His receptionist doesn't even know how to contact him during the day, so if you can't wait until evening, your only option is to go to "Urgencias," the emergency room, which everybody here seems to visit at the drop of the hat, whether it's because they can't see their regular doctor or they don't want to go to various different labs and wait one week for the results of a strep test. In fact, none of my Madrileno friends has ever heard of a strep test. If the child has white pus in the back of their throat, the doctors assume they have a throat infection and give you antibiotics.

Dr. R.G. de L., an older and very dignified person, reminds me of my childhood pediatrician, which is to say he says the same things as Dr. W, but with the the bedside manner of a mortician. "Madam, since this is your child's first year in preschool, you might as well expect for him to have a runny nose all the way through May. The cough is a healthy mechanism because it gets rid of the mucous in the lungs. If he wasn't coughing, he'd get a bacterial infection for sure."

His office isn't in a medical building at all, but in an elegant nineteenth century residential apartment building. As for the inside of the office, it looks like something out of a period movie from 60 years ago with reproduction antique furniture and books whose publication date probably coincided with the Spanish Civil war. Exactly nothing in the place is child-friendly, from the bay windows with low handles that my 2 yr old wanted to open and pitch himself out of, to the antique looking type-writer on the floor with loads of intriguing electrical wires. Ironically the only concession to juvenile furniture---plastic Ikea kid stools, posed the biggest problem. My 2 yr old proceeded to steal them from other children. Then he discovered that it was more fun to throw them on the floor and watch their legs and tops pop off. This was before he started to climb on the adult chairs and try and pull down the oil paintings (conveniently within the enterprising child's reach) and reach for handfuls of the random pamphlets with information about aloe vera hand creams, "sexo con seso" ("sex without stupidity?") for adolescents, even though I've never seen a child older than 9 at the office, and Parkinson's disease (in a pediatrician's office?) Needless to say I spent the whole time trying to control my little American savage, cowed by the disapproving regard of the other parents and, later, Dr. R.G. de L.

The one time I did bring all 4 children to his office, it was total chaos. The children brought balloons and proceed to run around tossing them to each other, screaming and fighting. My children not only stand out because of their unruly behavior, but also because of their number. With the exception of immigrants, the average Madrileno my generation seems to have one, at most, two children. I couldn't tell if it was with pity or disapproval that Dr. R.G. de L. told me, after our first vist "Usted tiene muchos hijos" "You have lots of children." At that point, I was so exhausted and worn down, I couldn't think of anything better to say than "Pues alguien tiene que tenerlos" "Well, somebody's got to have them..."

Chocolate con Churros--The Neighbors Strike Back

2008-12-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have become acquainted with our neighbors in my previous blog entry. Since that time, they have not been idle. In addition to a hostile visit from the forty-something single woman who lives with her mother in the apartment below us, the building association (representing the owners of the exactly 12 units in this place) sent us a certified nastygram citing "numerous complaints" about the noisiness of our children and telling us that noise is forbidden in the building before 9am. Almost none of these people, in the almost four months that we have lived here, has ever bothered to introduce themselves to us, but they apparently organize enough amongst themselves to dispatch certified communications via the post office.

None of this bothers my French husband in the least. He, himself, has vivid childhood memories of ongoing noise complaints (regarding his brother and himself) from the curmudgeonly old lady who lived in the apartment below his family. One day, in a scene reminiscent of Tatie Danielle, his mother tried to shut the door on her, but the sturdy old hag stuck her foot out, at which point his father had to physically push her out.

I wonder if there isn't something particularly Anglo-Saxon, reinforced by the American high school experience, about the tendency to spend so much time worrying about whether people (whom we may not even like ourselves) like us?

In a nod to Stephen Colbert, my phrase of the day, came across it in a Canard Enchaine article about a French socialist political convention, is "petits meurtres entre amis," which I roughly translate as "little assassinations among friends." This phrase conveys, for me, two sentiments: a dismissive tone regarding a petty domestic spat and the slightly more sophisticated and cynical perspective that the greater the degree of intimacy among people, the greater the likelihood they'll be at each others throats--especially when the stakes are low.

You can't control whether people like you, but you can force them to respect you.

On that note, I exacted my own petty revenge on the neighbors. I complained to the landlady that the owners renovating the third floor apartment were giving the building keys to very unsavory sub-contractors--that these people entered the building at all hours of the day with no supervision, and that they were coming up to our floor acting like they were casing it out for future robberies (all true). The upshot is that they changed the keys to the building, thereby inconveniencing everybody. Because of the key situation, I found myself in the ironic position of letting the judgmental neighbors' adolescent children in the building at one thirty in the morning, when their parents were out of town. They were standing outside the door as we were returning from a party. We let them in and chatted briefly on the elevator, and, really, their children were quite nice.

Chocolate con churros--Meet the Neighbors

2008-11-19T03:46:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite Spanish breakfast--Spanish hot chocolate is very thick and soupy and churros are sort of like string shaped donuts with no sugar. It is in no way heart-healthy and the first time I tasted it, I thought it tasted weird, but it grew on me. I've finally found an unpretentious bar--Cafe Simpatia--on my walk back from taking the children to the school bus--where this costs two euros twenty centavos and the barman automatically knows what to bring me.

My biggest preoccupation in Spain is the details of daily life and raising four children in a foreign country. Any insights I might have will reflect that, so if you are expecting to read about the latest, coolest nightclub or the most up-to-date cultural offerings in Madrid, this is not the spot. "Chocolate con churros" is a metaphor, for me, of adapting to a different place and the quick sketch writing that most suits my schedule and interests.

Meet the Neighbors

We live in a nineteenth century building in the Barrio de Salamanca whose twelve units (mostly still owned or rented out by various descendants of the original family) are occupied by older inhabitants, who never had children or whose children are mostly grown up. My husband now has proof of my laughable American naivete in wanting to invite the neighbors over for a get-to-know you drink. Apparently the neighbors, at least the across-the-hall and floor-below inhabitants, don't like us, or rather they don't like our noisy children. Nobody in this building seems to really talk to each other (I speak more to the live-in help than to some of their employers, whom I have never met), so the central point of communication is the "portero" (doorman). He transmitted the neighbor's complaints to our landlady, who communicated them to us. To know us (or our children) is not necessarily to love us; the cultural quirkiness lies in specifically why our neighbors consider us to be deviants. It all hinges on our schedule, which is "desfasado" (off kilter) with that of self-respecting Spaniards.

While they politely note that our children are mostly silent after 8pm, they particularly resent the fact that the children get up at 7am and trample around the apartment like a herd of wild elephants. This is a necessity during the week since the children have to be on the school bus on or before 8pm. Unfortunately, getting my children to sleep much past 7 or 8 am on a weekend is luxury I have yet to enjoy. My childless neighbors don't get up until 9 or 10am and the older children of the other neighbors happily sleep in on the weekends as well.

If you are going to live here and don't come from some Latin or other country with a similar timetable, the first thing that takes some getting used to is the schedule. People don't seem to work much before nine thirty in the morning, many shops don't open until 10 am. Lunch is at 2pm instead of 12 and most of the shops and public services close from 2pm to 5pm. If it's a public service, it usually opens at 9 and closes down for good (to the public) at 2pm. I don't know what kind of lunches working people take here, but most stay in the office until 7pm or much later depending on their profession and level of responsibility. 8pm is the happy hour and nobody has dinner until 10pm. Most restaurants don't even open until 9pm, and even that is considered a rather uncivilized "giri" (foreigner) hour.

It seems that if I were Spanish my children would adhere to a more civilized schedule, or at least be more silent and better behaved, but also I wouldn't give much of a damn what the neighbors thought anyway. I discussed the neighbors' complaints with some of my husbands' local family members and their feeling was why in the world would anybody care about getting to know their neighbors? They have lived in compete anonymity, or, barring that, a detente of mutual dislike with theirs for decades, exchanging nothing more than the requisite hola (hello) and hasta luego (see you later) on the elevator. They told me that the official noise ordinance is from 12pm to 8am and, as long as I generally respected that, there's nothing anybody can do.

This point was really brought home to us by the story the landlady told us about the previous tenants who lived in a state of open war with her family for generations, protected by some grandfathered rent control law, whereby tenants can inherit apartments and inflation-indexed rent from their parents and spouses. The grandfather of the deceased spouse of the last tenant rented our apartment in 1931. As the years passed, land values and rents increased dramatically beyond the official inflation index, but nobody could kick the tenants out as long as they paid their ridiculously low hereditary rent. The landlords couldn't sell the apartment because the undesirable tenants and their low rent went with the property. The only thing they could do was prevent the tenants from doing any work to the apartment, so at the end they had to wait until the widow of the grandson of the original tenant died to recuperate an apartment, that was in shambles.

Sidenote: The portero also inherited his job from his father. He seems to occupy an executive function over invisible subordinates. In his case, doorman is somewhat of a mis-nomer, since he is present at unpredictable hours, spends most of his time smoking outside and gives me a look (with my baby carriage or shopping bags) that dares me to ask him to open the door. Other times, he relies on a tactic of turning the act of opening the door into an exaggerated parody that brings home just how inconvenient my presence is, accompanied by a smirk of satisfaction in being the central dispatch for the neighbors complaints about us, and the certitude that he (or his descendants) will outlast us.

Bring on the Bitch

2008-09-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

This Hilary vs. Sarah Palin parody is hilarious.

The friend who sent me the link, is more politically conservative than I. She is arguing with me that Sarah Palin is more than a beauty queen bimbo. At the same time she has some useful advice for me about how to avoid the six-year old nightmare birthday party from hell. Between the two classes where my twins are in enrolled, there are fifty children...

"Just invite the boys so you only have 25 kids to deal with. I, in the meantime, have been trying to negotiate the smallest possible party with my son. There are 10 boys in his class so I told him he can have twelve kids because all the favors I have to buy come by the dozen. So I told him I would pass on the savings to him by reinvesting it into the final product of his party. Meaning that for his Indiana Jones party, instead of getting a bag full of crap, each kid will now get an authentic Indiana Jones whip that they can take home and terrorize their younger siblings with. I figured I'd try to teach him some precepts of capitalism before it becomes totally antiquated...as it seems to be headed. :-)"

I am excited because my first-choice candidate for a live-in helper has accepted the job. It's so nice to have somebody who is excited to work for me--not because the children or I are so nice and lovable, but because in the local job market I pay top-of-market wages and am a catch as an employer. Although I have four children, the three older ones are in school most the day, I don't have a ginormous three story house to clean, I don't require every article of clothing we wear to be hand-ironed, don't require them to wear a uniform, and I am willing to provide food and pay social security.

While my conservative friend dedicates her time to worthy charities to make the world a better place, I, Wellesley graduate that I am (like Hillary and also that bitchy stock broker played by Sigourney Weaver in that 80s movie "Working Girl," the one who rightly gets what she deserves from the hard working blue collar secretary played by Melanie Griffith), in the words of the twenty-something, American current incumbent of the job (with the kind of self righteousness that you can only have when you're still subsidized by your parents)--am "taking part in the exploitation of the third world and women."

This moment of zen is seconded only by my IT industry marketing skills, which included hiring females to liven up our user conference party. On the advice of my older cousin, who at 36 married a 20 year old swim suit model and event promotions girl, I learned that I could request head shots of these girls before hiring them, dictate what they wear and request "that they not chew gum." When I told this to a good friend and colleague, he drily suggested that if JBoss didn't pan out, at the least I could get a job as head of HR at Hooters.

Ironcically, thanks to my experience at JBoss, I can now afford to contribute to the Arts as a playwright/expiate the sins of my past life and experience catharsis therein, by writing about characters as self-indulgent and flawed as myself.

A former boss of mine, who took pity on me and hired me, partly because I could talk about literature and partly because I reminded him of a Wellesely girl he dated in the fifties (he, himself, was a graduate of Harvard Law who never practiced law a day of his life, but went into advertising instead)--once had this to say about that great American contributor to the Arts, Aaron Spelling, "if you want to liven up a tier-three soap opera that is going nowhere (Melrose Place), sometimes you gotta bring on the bitch (Heather Locklear)."

Of course, if you were talking about Shakespeare, she'd be Lady Macbeth, but same premise.

Postcards from Spain: Culture in Context

2008-08-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

The first thing that strikes me when I think about writing about my experiences here, as an American living in Spain, is all the things I don't want to write.

This is because of all the times I have been on the other side of the fence. When foreigners implore the "Natives" to read their cute little blog musings on the natives' little corner of the world, they don't imagine that how offensive the Natives will find some of those musings," for ex. "Have I become dumber since moving to America?"

Genre and the American Travel writer

The Self-loathing American/Geography snob
This is the type of person who usually grew up somewhere in bum-fuck and could not wait to move to New York, San Francisco, or Abroad, to manifest their innate sense of superiority to all the rubes they grew up with. This kind of person inevitably becomes "more" New York, San Francisco or name your Euro capital than anybody who actually grew up there. I think there is something innately fishy about being ashamed of where you come from, especially when that person came from the same place (in a manner of speaking) as me, and, therefore, looks down on me! I am not always proud of my country and don't agree with its current government, but there are still a lot of things I like about America, that I am grateful for. I realize that where I come from has played a significant role in my identity today.

The American Bigot
I was well into a reverie of the reverse type: "When Americans go abroad, waxing poetic about their fresh baguettes and Tuscan views and how they just love the relaxed pace of living in the 'Old World' they don't realize that this is because they are 'On vacation' and they are not having to get anything practical done."

This was in a moment of frustration, dealing with the headache of getting papers here, like the NIE--foreign tax ID number, whose only benefit is a big "come and get me" to the tax authorities--it's harder than you think to get, and without it you can't even get a mobile phone in Spain. Or, dealing with Customs and blocked containers and more administrative papers. In short, huffing and puffing because my immigrant status here forces me to deal with that most international, illogical and pernicious of characters: the low level civil servant.

Just at the moment, I feel myself slipping into the American bigot rant, which frankly, being married to somebody from somewhere else and having dealt with the INS on his behalf and seeing what kind of treatment you can expect from them, even if you do have a higher education and speak perfect English, and God forbid you move to another region of the US and they can't locate your file..., I was still tempted to feel all American-bigoty about how much more efficient we are at getting things done, when what do I get in my in-box? A note from my surgeon's "appeals professional," apparently he has a full-time person with this title on staff. The letter informs me that Cigna (which has now been bumped ahead of Blue Cross Blue Shield in my personal circle of Hell ranking of health insurance companies) has decided to only pay half their portion of my surgery, from back in June.

Nastygram to Cigna

So I spent the morning writing an appeal to Cigna, pointing out that the first reason they denied partial payment on my claim--that I had co-insurance, was patently false, I do not now, nor have I ever had co-insurance. So that does not exactly inspires me with confidence at how closely they reviewed my dossier, as a whole. Or, do they automatically deny payment as a policy, assuming that not everybody is going to be pissed off and energetic enough to appeal? I had a PPO, what ever happened to my choice in health care? Why should some paper pusher at Cigna determine that I should go to some hack who just happens to be in their network to have my belly sliced open from hip to hip when I could have a laparoscopic procedure done by The Male Surgeon and His Colleague, who have more published successes in this surgery than anybody else in the World, let alone the Atlanta metropolitan area? I have a poor history of wound healing and four children to run after...and so on.

Postcards from Spain: Afernoon in Ikea

2008-08-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

Ikea must truly be the world's most democratic place. While equipping our apartment in Madrid, we made the requisite stop there. After spending an hour and a half configuring something called the "blobbi" or the "schlaghklumf" or some other lump of unpronounceable Scandinavian syllables for our living room couch and various other pieces of furniture, we were in for a nasty surprise. Things have changed since our last stop in Ikea outside Paris in the mid-nineties. You no longer drop off your ticket at the warehouse and wait for them to bring you your boxes. Each piece of furniture comes with it's own aisle and item number; you grab your cart and off you go to the warehouse to find each individual item and lift it onto your cart, before proceeding to checkout. This might work just fine for one or two items, but gets tiresome when you are equipping a whole apartment.

Talk about a company that knows how to squeeze a margin. I look at the smiling employees (they all mostly seem happy to work there) re-stocking items and ask my husband if we couldn't just hand one of them 20 or 30 euros to get our stuff for us? He said this just isn't done and they would be offended that I am trying to subvert their egalitarian Scandinavian ethos with my filthy American money and expectations. I wonder about the supposed high level of youth unemployment in Spain and other European countries. Surely it wouldn't cost Ikea anything to let these people earn tips by getting people's boxes for them at the warehouse? Where's the evil in paying for extra service? Why isn't Ikea online, or is it?

Marc tells this story to Sacha (Labourey)--our friend and former colleague at JBoss and RHT, who sympathizes. "I know what you're saying. The other day, I needed to buy some furniture for a family house in the mountains. I called up Ikea and told them that I had rented a truck and was going to drive 200 km just to get some furniture there and could they please reserve the pieces I wanted. They responded: No, we can't do that. All we can tell you is that there are eight of those items left and they are going fast, so we recommend you hurry."

We find ourselves reflecting. When we were young and didn't have money, we went to places like Ikea. Now that we're older and more settled, we are still still doing many of the exact same things. Some things don't change.

Live and Let N.I.E.

2008-08-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Confession: I didn't even make up this title, I found it on a Spain Expat blog.

For those who haven't contemplated moving to Spain, this is their foreign tax ID number. As far as I can tell, it conveys no advantage whatsoever to the holder besides acting as a giant "Come and Get Me" to the fiscal authorities. Unfortunately, every basic transaction you might want to perform in Spain requires the NIE, from getting a telephone to opening a bank account, to getting your stuff through customs. You would think it would be easy to get.

Perhaps it is...if I hadn't decided to engage the services of BlahBlahBlah (prestigious international audit, tax and consulting firm). When I had less, I used to fantasize about how much easier life would be if you could Pay People to Do Things For You. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. In the case of the immigration services provided by BlahBlahBlah, I've learned more in one hour on Google than anything they've told me or provided me with so far. My husband says that it's my fault, I should have known that BlahBlahBlah is far more concerned with its fat multinational corporate clients than private individuals, unless, perhaps, you happen to be Bill Gates. I engaged BlahBlahBlah in the hopes that it would shield me from the usual insults and injuries wielded by that most vicious of creatures--the Low Level Civil Servant, in this case employed by immigration authorities.

In my experience, the Low Level Civil Servant (LLCS) is an international breed, whose temperament tends to worsen when deployed in highly populated capital areas (conversely it can be quite nice and personable in the more sparsely populated rural settings). The typical LLCS exists in limbo between gratitude for its job for life and generous employment benefits, mixed with subtle disdain for the mind-numbingly repetitive functions it must perform, and outright contempt for the people it is compelled to serve. The Low Level Civil Servant is programmed to follow a systemic series of rules and to exist in a world with no individuals, only check-marks. Asked to perform any function not automatically subsumed in the order and exact definition of the checkmarks, the LLCS automatically spits out a "No" response. Regardless of one's circumstances, there is a two-step approach that can improve your odds with the LLCS. 1)self-abasement and recognition of the LLCS' superior authority. "Oh most powerful one whose hand rests upon the stamp that I currently need, please forgive my ignorant ways and failure to blah blah, I beseach you to look with favor upon your humble supplicant" is an appropriate tone to adopt, followed by 2) The VCH (very compelling story)

I, convalescent IV: Encounter with The Male Surgeon

2008-07-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

Post Script

Two and a half glasses of champagne (Veuve Cliquot), one half bag of Milano cookies later...

My surgery, a medically recommended procedure being related to the end-of-the-line as far as my (biologically) procreative life goes, offers in my choice of surgeon, a hilarious intersection in his clientele, divided between women like me with real medical conditions, and women whose procedures are purely elective and cosmetic. In my brief interaction with The Male Surgeon, whose tendency not listen to me and then interrupt me with pre-prepared answers that have little to do with anything I have said, has convinced me that, despite his superior anatomical knowledge of women, the only way he really likes dealing with them is completely knocked out under general anesthesia. Supposedly he's a wizard with trocars and laparoscope, which is more important than personality, under the circumstances.

I was supposed to be partially conscious for part of the procedure, but "freaked out" under the first narcotic they gave me which was supposed to be very chill, but not, apparently, chill enough for me. I am dying to know what I said or did, but The Male Surgeon, smiles, a first for him, which is completely unfair because I'm not smiling. What am I doing? I'm lying in extended recovery in more pain than I care to remember in a hospital gown reminiscent of Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets." Then, The Male Surgeon says, knowingly (ok what the frak did I do?), not to worry that "people do very weird things under the effect of anesthesia" and that I simply "wasn't comfortable" and that none of this means I was a "bad girl." If this was sexual repartee, that truly is as good as it gets for irony in my life these days.

Meanwhile, the marketing service employed by The Male Surgeon and His Colleague has been bombarding my email in-box lately wanting feedback on them. These emails started weeks before my procedure was scheduled, which is laughable because, whether or not, I'm "bad," I'm not stupid. I'm certainly not stupid enough to answer one of these and get moved from number two to number eight on his surgery schedule. You know the point where they've get the PA to stitch you up so they can make their four o'clock tee-off or worse yet, they accidentally nick a nerve somewhere and you won't be feeling anything for years. I'd like to think what I did tell him, under anesthesia, was that as a feminist and professional woman with serious medical issues, I don't completely relate to his advertising (glanced at once in "Atlanta Magazine") that seems to be aimed at the Alpharetta housewife who's afraid her husband is going to trade her in for a younger model and that his logo, with the strategically placed Georgia O'Keefe calla lily, would almost work, if it were intentionally that kitsch. Or, maybe I just made an ass of myself.

Post post script: Oxycodone, the Hillbilly Heroin

Worst of all, my husband, sympathizes with The Male Surgeon. "What did you say to him, honey? You could have had the ride of your life, but even after a healthy dose of what my anesthesiologist calls the 'number one drug abused by anesthesiologists who abuse drugs' (sounds good, but I'm not an anesthesiologist so I can't remember its name), "you're the one in ten who showed signs of residual "personality'." He wishes he could take me off-line when I get loopy and reload me into the system with plenty of upgrades. My husband says to write about oxycodone. What is there to say about oxycodone? It works. It takes the pain away. It fucks up your digestive system. My husband begs to differ, he nicked one of my painkillers in order to "get a good night's sleep," so good, in fact, that he didn't wake up until 11 am the next day. He says it's fantastic.

My husband comes around again and says that I have been writing for eight hours. He says that I am even more autistic than he is, because after four hours he needs a break. I say that I am a repressed autistic, who doesn't generally get to give in to her nature, seeing as we have four young children to raise.
So Nick and Nora Charles.

Thanks to those of you who sent flowers.

I, convalescent III: She Reads the Press

2008-07-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

The TUE (totally useless education) offered broad de Tocquevillian cultural speculations on the difference between BBC English (RP) and the totally flat Midwestern American newscaster pronunciation, which is totally accent-less (to an American). I read both the high and the low press, and when I say low, I mean really low, the lowest of the low, "The National Enquirer." I love you Dominick Dunne, old fart and insignificant snob that you are, for admitting that you were thrilled to learn one could get a subscription to that publication. Sometimes, I read "Vanity Fair," then in Mallorca, I discovered "The Daily Mail,"Hello" and "Tatler."

Although their standard is hipness as opposed to old money, "Vanity Fair" and "Tatler" seem to employ a formula first popularized, for Americans of my generation, by "The Preppy Handbook." Referring to the latter, Angela Carter amusingly described it as symptomatic of Reagan era prosperity, an instruction manual for the "nouveaux riches" to study the mores of the "anciens riches" so that they might pass among them unnoticed. "The Preppy Handbook" offered insights such as "money is like the golden retriever sitting by the fireplace, you don't necessarily notice it much, but it's good to know it's there." Written by a class-traitor, who bites the hand that feeds it (and laughs all the way to the bank), the levity of style reassures the reader that it's ok to pay attention to this sort of thing because nobody takes it seriously. As for le vice anglais, "Vanity Fair" tends toward interminable articles in which the Dear Reader is offered a glimpse at people whose lives are touched by beauty, coolness, social significance and/or deviance, the likes of which his own will never approximate," whereas "Tatler's" articles are shorter and get right to the point: new and unsuspected opportunities for social mortification. "What kind of bore are you" (always suspected you were a bore, but now you can find out what kind!) "The new ultra-rich" (and why you aren't anybody if you haven't got at least $IB) or "The latest, coolest neighborhood off the M something or other" (don't worry, once you discover it, the hip will have moved on someplace else.) I think I like the "Daily Mail" better.

Back to Anglo/French/American stereotypes, in the more serious international rags I read, where I quickly skim past all references to the Dismal Science, but linger in the Arts, Culture and Home sections, it appears They view us (Americans) as naive, overgrown children who are occasionally (but not often) visited by glimpses of self-awareness. Friday's FT movie section queries, in all seriousness: "Is the American capable of irony?" As for sex bay-bee, they seem to ascribe to us a mix of Puritanism and liberation that makes us sexually weirder than they are. It's barely relevant, but I love this repartee from my husband's great-aunt, a Very Grand Lady, who as the wife of the Spanish ambassador somewhere in South America, responded to a remark about Spanish imperialism with the comment "Really you ought to be grateful to us for civilizing you. Prior to the Spanish arrival you were running around with nothing but a tail-feather in the arse." Not sure where that leaves us, their own descendants, who grew up in Rousseau's Garden of Eden among the noble savages, the "criollos" or creoles, from the Spanish "criado alli" or "raised over there," but having lived in both the Old and the New World, I think we are a hybrid mutation.

Le Monde est Mondial

At any rate, I'm a lot more "demi-monde" than "Monde"--that's "demimonde" not Demi Moore and, if you do look it up: not a "grande horizontale" either. See "demi-world of ghost writers, hacks and publicists." In a life, largely unburdened by any qualities likely to make me popular or easily identify with selective groups, I do remember one time at Wellesley, I considered joining a "Society." It was one of the better ones frequented by the pretty, witty girls. I had friends there, I might have got in, but then I thought better of it. I realized to get in would be a complete masquerade. I'd have to spend the whole time making sure they didn't get to know the real, not pretty, not witty me. I joined the Shakespeare society, instead, which offered a greater mix of people, more interested in Elizabethan masques than social status. This is where I learned there was an Indian equivalent of "The Boarding School Boys." This phrase, straight out of my high-school and early college vocabulary, had to do with getting a date to PDC (local prep school, girls ask boys, Sadie Hawkins dance) or deb parties. The only thing more mortifying than having to rely on A Boarding School Boy as your date (you were such a loser you couldn't get anybody you actually knew--or their brother, or their resident exchange student--to accompany you), would be to learn that you (the male), had unwittingly, through the machinations of Your Mother, become the poster-child (I'm pretty sure a picture was included) for The Boarding School Boys. That is to say, she had written up a resume of your qualities and, more succintly why she thought you would be a desirable date aka "Eddy would like to meet some nice local girls." I think the Indian equivalent, never actually saw it, was a marriage-focused resume with picture that went something along the lines of "Arun is a doctor/engineer with a degree from blank, or blank IIT, great professional prospects, job waiting for him in the States...who would like to meet a suitable girl."

I, convalescent II: Southern Lady

2008-07-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

Would I be a Southern Lady? A lot of ambiguity where I come from when it comes to the word "Madame." In the careers I considered but never pursued category, I did once aspire to a title I could have earned on my own merits: The Honorable," for current or former American ambassadors. After all, if you are going to represent a bordello, why not The Most Powerful Nation in The Free World? In my imaginary life, association of "The Honorable" is tied up with lots of creamy stationary and the third person address: "The Honorable requests the honor of your presence" or "The Honorable declines to attend your function, busy as she is with her important life, looking after Matters of State."

The Southern (as opposed to European) definition of lady has more to do with "maintaining your dignity in the face of adversity" than who begat or married you. At least that's what I came upon reading Tennessee Williams' autobiography. He offers the example of the older lady living in reduced circumstances with her daughter and son-in-law, in a boarding house somewhere in Florida. Apparently being a lady means that when your drunken bastard of a son-in-law gets in a rage and drops his glass eye in your soup bowl, you gingerly fish it out (with the correct spoon) and say something along the lines of "Willis, I think you dropped something."

Meanwhile, I glance at a Lady's Progress sort of story in"Hello" magazine. "Lady So and So, daughter of somebody I've never heard of and his un-memorable little slut of a fourth wife (she's young enough to be his daughter and then some) became London's IT Girl and took up with a ubiquitous restaurateur." Exactly whose mother is proud of their daughter taking up with a ubiquitous restaurateur? The Hilton's may not act like ladies, but they're the grand-daughters of a hotelier, for frak's sake. We then learn that "Young Lady So and So (now past her prime in the Euro scene?) aspires to come Stateside and do Reality TV." There again, who, with any shred of dignity, would do reality TV? Whatever happened to the Pamela Harrimans? They had presence and style. At least Pamela's resume had lovers with premium names you'd heard of--The Aga Khan, Agnelli, etc.

Oh back to my denouement, forget the blood and lizards. Pan to some generic Western frontier scene. Cheryl Crow is singing about putting on a poncho and playing for mosquitoes, drinking, and talking about thrift store jungles, and Geronimo's rifle (he he), Marilyn's shampoo and Benny Goodman's corset and pen--my cultural patrimony. Or maybe, it's the South, throw in some magnolias and the strains of Reba McEntire's "Fancy" are playing instead

I knew what I had to do but I made myself this solemn vow
That I's gonna be a lady someday
Though I don't know when or how
I couldn't see spending the rest of my life
With my head hung down in shame you know
I might have been born just plain white trash
But fancy was my name

I, convalescent I: Remembering JBoss

2008-07-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

For somebody full of nervous energy, the hardest thing is to be still. The only other time in my life I have been in a similar situation was six weeks of bed-rest before giving birth to twins in 2002. My husband bought me a laptop and set-up wireless in the house for the first time. I can remember having about two hours a day in which I could get some work done, something that probably saved my sanity. At any rate, this weekend my parents have taken the three older kiddos for the first time in as long as I can remember, leaving us with His Babyship (ok he's not a baby anymore, he's 18 mos. old) who's chirruping about, the house with his nanny, and there's my husband--which leaves me with Time To Write.

Remembering JBoss

The difference between now and my bed-rest with the twins was a sensation, then, of germinating something, both biological and externally, with the fast growth of the company. The other day, a chance coincidence brought my husband back in touch with a figure from our previous life, a company that was an early on-site training customer. My husband didn't at first remember the name (nobody who knows him should ever be offended by this trait), but I eventually did because it was connected with that refreshing novelty of Getting Paid, something my upbringing had not quite led me to believe was possible in the context of independence, rebellion and Having Fun. Although, much of the early work was certainly mundane, much concerned with setting up trainings and Java User Group talks, arranging wires, signing checks, reading legal documents and approving contracts--that I laugh when I read about business school grads wanting to be entrepreneurs because I have a hard time reconciling that sort of risk-avoidant, professionally conventional stamp of social approval with getting your hands dirty with the unglamorous work and the professionally and socially dubious status of the old-fashioned entrepreneur (he who has no money and no patronage). So, we built a company in the shadow of a standard and a brand built by my husband's former employer, unofficially barred from JavaOne, we ran our own dog and pony show at the bar next door. The neighbors and social acquaintances presumably imagined my husband and I sold novelties out of the trunk of our car, and those people who had heard of us professionally told us we were "crazy," although being from the South, there is a distinction. When you're poor, you're crazy. When you're rich, you become "eccentric."

The high point in our public awareness was the day The Industry Billionaire, whose public persona channels Genghis Khan, that is if Will Ferrell played Genghis Khan with the sort of one-liners Will Ferrell would use (disclaimer, my husband has met Genghis; I have not. If I did, I would like to talk to him about his Japanese garden). Anyway, The Industry Billionaire let it be known through his flunkies, that he might Have An Interest in us, an interest that quickly waned once he learned that we had shortly thereafter sold ourselves to a smaller company. At this point The Industry Billionaire publicly congratulated himself on not having bought us (IBM and BEA then publicly congratulated themselves that they too "passed" on us, even though they never were real contenders). He speculated that he could just as easily rape our technology and toss it into the gutter without the inconvenience of having any dealings with such contempt-worthy beings as ourselves and Our New Patron.

They say the English 19th century novel ends with epithalamion; the 19th century French novel--the French being more cynical and worldly--although, rather amusingly, they imagine the English to be far more pervy than they are: witness le vice anglais--begins with epithalamion and goes downhill from there. The American 19th century novel, from what I've gleaned from my Totally Useless Education, was less concerned with social mobility (thank God we got out of the fucking village) than with the epic battle of Man vs. Nature (think Melville's "Moby Dick") and surviving amidst the flora and fauna of the New World. At any rate, my problem with the American 19th century novel, being a 21st century sort of American girl, is what if you reached the frontier 20 years too late? The frontier's already mostly carved up. You claim your territory, then you take a look at the plot of land adjacent to yours, the adjacent land-owner takes a look at the menacing rancher from across the river and before you know it, you wake up with a splitting hang-over after a shot-gun marriage in Vegas. There's blood everywhere and the lizards are crawling up the walls. Maybe I'm getting a little too Hunter S. Thompson "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," here. Maybe "Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman" is better? Hmmh?

Battlestar Galactica: BSG and me

2008-05-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Frak, frak, frak, motherfrakker, clusterfrak, frakker, frakked up, frak me, frakkin' A, fraktard--lately I find myself employing the word and its derivatives at the most inopportune times. There's a certain ambiguity about the expression, which combines the childish glee of saying a bad word, with a sneaking suspicion of massive un-coolness on the level of somebody's middle-aged midwestern aunt saying "Oh, for cry out."

My husband and I finally succumbed to the a) the plastic fantastic life: traveling to beautiful exotic places, interacting with beautiful, important people, in the course of carrying out beautiful, important work, ahem...b) taking a break from running around with the kids for our nightly Netflix date (don't call us after 9) of seasons-old programming from our new favorite, newly discovered TV series, recommended by friends: BSG (Battlestar Galactica)

My French-born husband wants to know if "House" could be a cult classic. I try to explain that "House" could not be considered a "cult classic." It is too consistently good and too many mainstream people like it.

Battlestar Galactica is a cult classic: being a B or B+ series, that has not (and never will be) discovered by the masses, about which one can feel a certain sense of superiority for overcoming all of its short-comings in return for rare nuggets of superior and transcendent drama, not to mention the satisfaction of belonging to a geeky subculture where you can impress your friends with the correct usage of all the series-specific jargon. Kind of like being in the Open Source Java community of yesteryear.

I have this obsession with BSG, in spite, or because of...

1)Tier two script writing--all those non-story arc episodes you have to "power through"--we're in the doldrums of it right now--"The tylium refinery labor dispute episode"--what the frak? Hello, if I'm watching sci-fi, it's to see the last battle that will determine the fate of the human race and hot Cylon sex, not because I'm interested in the working conditions of the underclass laboring in the tylium refinery.

2)Wooden acting--per "Entertainment Weekly," which I catch up on in my weekly appointment for allergy shots: half the fun is to see if any of the actors can break out of their one trademark facial expression.

3)Egregious use of genre cliche: "The One, whose destiny it is to save the human race;" a "tough, but damaged" central character--this role mostly monopolized by Starbuck; "Oh my God the machines have infiltrated our central defense system and are going to set off a nuclear catastrophe that will end the human race;" "the machines now look like us now;" the guessing game of who's the Cylon," and the old stand-by of "will they ever act on their latent attraction to each other and actually get it on"(Apollo/Starbuck, twilight romance of Admiral Adama, President Roslin)--the latter usually works best with female audience by exploiting their latent romantic tendencies. Granted, these are all staples of tier-one drama, as well. There are only so many story lines out there, the difference is in the writing and the acting.

4) HD would be

a) Bad, according to Nathalie, 'cause there's already too many disturbing close-ups on Admiral Adama's acne-pitted face. Come on, he should at least be earning enough per episode for some laser or collagen improvement.

b) Good, according to Marc and Andy O.--for highlighting more naked Boomer/Athena/Number6 scenes. Here is an actual conversation between Marc and Andy O. "AndyO: I swear she was naked... Marc:was not... AndyO: yes, she was... Marc: you mean she was naked under her military uniform...(they settle the score by going back and actually watching actual BSG episode in slow mo with poorly lit, multiple naked Boomers)...Marc: ok, you're right on that one! but, seriously, man! from a time investment standpoint for actual skin, you might want to consider porn, I recommend Natasha Nice these days.

5)In the sack/most frakkable?

He says: Starbuck, ok but not so much, too metro-butch (the feminine equivalent of metro-sexual). D'Anna? nah, all the sex appeal of a cold cucumber sandwich. Number Six, mos def'. He's ready to upgrade to his pneumatically-enhanced Cylon wife right now, oh wait, she winds up displaying all the annoying pyscho-bitchy qualities of a real wife. The Baltar projection episodes with Number Six are definitely tier-one, by far the best thing in the series. Hands-down, hottie, according to both of them: Athena/Boomer. Marc also likes Dualla.

She says: Gaius Baltar. Need I say more? As the picaresque, scheming, self-absorbed, disgraced, and utterly craven computer geek, he is by far the most interesting character in the series. Lee Adama and Helo? Nah, too bland.

6) Insiders only:

Deep thought a) If Rickard Oberg had based his alternative reality on BSG, who would be a Cylon, what kind? No spoilers please, we haven't watched all the episodes yet.

Deep thought b) Selling out (Gaius Baltar in BSG), Apache/recent licensing issues/MSFT as seen by Andy O. "You know you're getting older when you can accept selling out, as long as it's a greedy sell-out, for something that actually was worth it. What's pathetic is selling-out and being cheap..."

Spring Break in Utah

2008-03-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

Am here skiing or, more correctly "avoiding skiing" --one of those activities, like golf, that didn't turn out to be a great marriage enhancer for us, showcasing, as it does, significant differences of ability and inclination. So now, like Bartleby the Scribner, I choose not to. I check the children into ski school from 9-3, and choose to snow-shoe, cross-country ski, but most of all, I just enjoy agenda-free time, to drink coffee, read a newspaper and write.

Have lately been amused by the Eliot Spitzer brouhaha. Nothing like that after dinner mint of political scandal, to entertain and distract from the depressing and tedious reality of the economy and the war. What does surprise me is that this sort of activity shocks anybody. Reminds me of my very Catholic, French-raised grandmother who declined to watch some Life-of-Christ inspired movie on the premise that she "knew the story." She did, however, watch "Emmanuelle," a soft-porn of the late seventies, presumably to stay abreast of what the young were up to in those days and was known to loudly and publicly remark afterwards, "___, ___, ___, doesn't anybody f... anymore?" Or maybe it's like the old joke "Why do women watch porn? To see if they get married at the end."

At any rate, politicians, prostitutes and crimes seeming to be linked from time out of mind, it's the petty details that interest me. The more unctuously sanctimonious, full of self-righteous cant the public persona; the more entertaining the skeletons likely to be clangoring about their closet. This is why, for those who have ever had to answer to the finger-wagging and opprobrium of others, it's expedient to ascribe to those voices of outrage the most deviant behavior imaginable, which works pretty well...if you've got a dirty mind.

What iconography, what "bons mots" will come to be associated with these stale lusts? What contradictions are offered by the public posturing and the private perversions; what legal terminology and period details will be used to define their crimes--"Back to family values," a taste for asphyxia, call girls and Russian spies with Profumo; the mass-market blue dress from the Gap added a de Toquevillian touch to the Clinton era, "Not a penny more, not a penny less" came back to haunt novel-writing Lord Archer, in this case it's the anti-terrorism laws governing financial transfers and the Mann act for Spitzer. I was reassured to learn that a top-drawer whore still earns more than the equivalent industry consultant, although they both are limited to selling their time. Ultimately though, based on who was writing the checks, it would appear, for those who successfully overcome certain constraints involving time and reality, there's still more money to be made f--ing with people's minds.

Personally, my favorite detail was the name Q.A.T. Consulting. It's exactly the kind of acronym-based, pretentious little name an Internet-related company would choose for itself, yet possessing exactly what most of those names lack, a dash of delightfully sardonic and self-aware humor--not always surprising for those in the business of catering to more literal or littoral humours. Sort of like the Cheetah's credit card signature being "Alluvia," or a company with a human resources incentive program called "Brave New World," or the little chuckle elicited by the Latinate name of a short-lived software consultancy called "Ars Digita."

Martin Lukes Goes to Jail

2008-01-24T20:25:00.000-08:00

My father is always criticizing me for not reading the Atlanta newspaper and keeping up with the local news. I blame it on the fact that I grew up here in the eighties. My memories of local news coverage run something along the lines of "Atlanta Zoo initiates program where local children can come and 'Watch TV with (local gorilla) Willie B'." Lately, my hometown and the surrounding 'burbs (OTP) have proven nationally newsworthy with such diverse personages and events as the Mansion Madam, the Runaway Bride and the Michael Vick dog-fighting charges.

Nevertheless, it never occurred to me that I would pick up the pages of the Financial Times, that daily broadsheet of the dismal science, and realize that I had missed out on the daily goings on of a juicy trial taking place in my own back yard. Today, I was introduced to "the great chief leader" of Atlanta-based multi-national a-b global, the iconic thought leader and world-class communicator, who re-defined management thinking with his foundational concepts: creovative(tm) and integethical(tm).

According to the FT, Mr. Lukes has just been sentenced to 2 years and three months in federal prison on three counts of insider trading, which he will likely serve in FCI Coleman, a correctional complex in central Florida.

The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

2007-12-21T21:21:00.000-08:00

Say say my playmate,
Come out and play with me,
And bring your dollies three,
Climb up my apple tree,
Slide down my rainbow,
Into my cellar door,
And we'll be jolly friends,
Forever more
(children's nursery rhyme)

I once read a blog entry whose author waxed poetic on the fact that certain people (blogging or interacting on Internet forums) “just don’t get it,” it presumably being some unwritten rules for coolness on the Internet, understood by “those in the know"/the author’s particular clique of Internet acquaintances.

I had assumed that most of us were automatically uncool, by virtue of spending any significant amount of time on the Internet, in the first place. Weren’t all the cool people too busy caught up living the breathless whirl of their exciting lives to read or write? Then it dawned on me. Was it possible to be such a loser that even the other losers looked down on you? This possibility first occurred to me in Mr. M’s grammar class in Junior High.

I attended an old fashioned American prep school, also attended by my father, my aunts, my uncle, my sister and one of my cousins. It had a motto that went something along the lines of “And Jesus grew in understanding with the Lord” and an honor code. I learned to diagram sentences, scan poetry meter and exegete Bible verses, a tedious exercise that did wonders for my textual analysis skills but little for the faith it was aimed to reinforce. If God communicated by the written word and the written word was subject to multiple interpretations, how could we then be sure what God was saying? Maybe he speaks in Math. But I never was much good at Math. Most of all, I remember my chief preoccupation in those years was attempting to decipher the unwritten grammar of the arbitrary and constantly changing social behavioral code meted out by certain (seeming at the time) godlike peers.

In such a place, it was possible to achieve a solid academic education, along with an adequate introduction to, and, for the lucky, a lifetime immunization to institutionalized hypocrisy. Like so much in life, the lessons from what I'll call for lack of better name "The John Knox Institute" that really stayed with me were not the ones they consciously taught. Dispensing and deflecting sarcasm was one survival skill you might pick up there. The biggest triumph was to matriculate with some significant part of your dignity and individuality intact. I don’t know if I hated that place so much as I hated the person I was in that place. Funny how so many behavioral instincts go back to the schoolyard. It is one of our first frames of reference.

Back to Mr. M’s eighth grade grammar class. Some of my teachers at The John Knox Institute were truly inspiring individuals and some could have inspired Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” (We don’t need no education), M. was of the latter persuasion. As he handed back our tests, M. would cheerfully dispense his prognosis of the student’s collegiate aspirations accordingly—Duke, Vanderbilt, University of Georgia (considered a safety school for Atlanta prep schools in the eighties), Ole Miss (you really fucked up and couldn’t get into the University of Georgia), Bumfuck University in the middle of the sticks, trade school, enlisted in the military and very rarely, an Ivy League school.

It was another boring day learning about prepositional phrases in “Warriner’s Grammar and Composition” so I didn’t hear what Joe Dweeb said. Joe Dweeb had coke bottle glasses, wore Seventies style clothing (before Seventies clothing came back in style), supposedly had gotten a sixteen hundred on his SATs, had parents who were university professors and lived outside the Perimeter. None of these attributes, in and of itself, would have counted against him, if he wasn’t simply the type of kid who was doomed to be spurned by his more conventional peers anyway. He was unapologetically different. He also, apparently, had a sardonic sense of humor because that day he made a joke. I didn’t hear Joe Dweeb’s joke. If I had heard it, perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten it.

I did hear M’s response: “Joe, only you and I got that joke, and I didn’t think it was funny.” To this day, I think this is the cruelest put-down. I remember thinking how sad and isolating it would be if somewhere some person told a joke, a clever, complicated joke, with multiple levels of humor and frames of reference. And the impossibly improbable occurs: somewhere across the space-time continuum, some other sentient being claims to comprehend the joke, only the cruelest part of the joke is the one other person capable of comprehending it, doesn't think it's funny. This kind of makes me think about process of writing on the Internet and a C.S. Lewis quote where he says “we read to know that we are not alone.” Presumably we write for the same reason, but sometimes the very act or space in which it takes place leaves us feeling even more so.

The Space In Between

2007-10-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
Friedrich Nietzsche

In that awkward space, somewhere in between
What you’ve done, what you failed to do;
Who you were, the person you failed to become;
The vision you attempted to create,
The reality that took its place,
In a broken culture you couldn't change.

People get lost
Somewhere in between
Where you let them down, and they let you down.

You wonder what you could have done differently?

Who knew? Did They?
They were laughing all along.

You see a good movie the other night.
You know what it means to communicate in codes.

What does that accomplish,
When it’s not that people don’t know the truth;
It's that they don’t care.

Are there others who understand?
Does it matter?

It was a wave. You hopped on. You had your ride.
Did you get there too early?
Or was it always already too late?
Or just too late for you?

You were the pilgrim,
At Vanity Fair waylaid.

The Yell School of Drama

2007-10-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

"In my sex fantasy, nobody loves me for my brain"
--Nora Ephron.

My writing collaborator and I have discovered that the most common path to production for first-time playwrights is to enter sponsored drama competitions. Unfortunately, many of them like The Alliance Theater in Atlanta's Kendeda Competition require that entrants be enrolled in a graduate playwriting program.

This is not an option for us. We have seven children between us, not to mention a stack of superfluous diplomas. My colleague has an MBA, CPA, cooking school diploma and divemaster certification. Ironically, the latter two degrees have proven the most useful in our writing adventures. As for me, no more diplomas, thank-you-very-much. Graduating from Wellesley College Phi Beta Kappa, with an Honors degree in English literature couldn't even get me an $18,000 a year publishing job in New York back in 1994. My Universite de Paris DEA (Masters) in Comparative Literature was worse than having no graduate degree at all. This testimony of impracticality was guaranteed to send would-be employers packing.

I suppose none of this would matter if I were a clever, resourceful sort of girl.... In my most recent employment experience as the Director of Communications for JBoss, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to convince journalists to write about us and paying talented full time PR to do just this. It never occurred to me that I could skip that superfluous step by simply pretending to be a journalist. Not only would I have saved money, I would have done away with the inconvenience of relying on two credible sources for my stories. In a crazy mixed up world where legitimate journalists pretend to be anonymous bloggers, I missed the boat on corporate PR pretending to be disinterested journalists.

Ironically, it was my old Wellesley tee-shirt that initiated a conversation about journalism with another mother, while we were waiting to pick up our kids at school. She, herself, had attended Barnard, and then Columbia School of Journalism. She mentioned that the loans for two years at the latter totalled more than her four years at Barnard. My wiser pseudo-journalist self certainly would have skipped that step. I could get more mileage out of a fake pair of tits. I came to this conclusion observing first-hand the successful interview tactics of a journalist from a respected business publication. Her plunging decollete exerted a Kaa-like effect on her interviewees--"Don't think about the questions, boys; just focus on these." No doubt she had figured out the corresponding plunge in the heterosexual male IQ, transforming the heppest and smartest Web 2.0-types into this.

Thankfully, my certificate of enrollment in a Masters program in the Fine Arts is being mailed to me, forewith. Not the Yale School of Drama, but the Yell! (in the South, this is pronounced 'yay-ul') School of Drama, my distinguished soon-to-be alma-mater, a place that understands that the implication that I am anything less than talented flies squarely in face of the incipient dramatist I was born to be. And that for the $200 I am paying for my diploma, I am far too busy and important a person to be bothered with studying the techniques of playwriting or reading anybody that has mastered them.

Lambchop in La La Land

2007-09-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Investigating what it might take to succeed as a scenariste, I came across the following analysis of the role of the artist and the producer in David Mamet's Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie business

"The artist is, in effect, a sort of gangster. He hitches up his trousers and goes into the guarded bank of the unconscious in an attempt to steal the gold of inspiration. The producer is like the getaway driver who sells the getaway car and waits outside the bank grinning about the deal he's made."

Artists, craftspeople and directors

CV: Experience as a ne'er do well

Medical history: Preferably Asperger's Syndrome. Surprisingly, Mamet fails to mention the inherent potential of manic depressive, obsessive compulsive and insomniac diagnoses

Motivation: Pleasure in creating something, doing the job well. Like a terrier gnawing on a bone, it's fundamentally what you do, an expression of who you are; you wouldn't be happy doing anything else.

Mythological archetype: The Trickster -- "characters who express or intuit the propensity to upset and so reorder the world on a different level of abstraction"

Paid your dues: "i.e.been seduced and abandoned sufficiently to tire of it"

Producers

Education: "The American educational system prepares those with second-rate intellects to thrive in a bureaucratic environment...the bureaucratic rigors of the studio system probe the neophyte's threshold for boredom, repetition, sychophancy and nonsense."

Origin/Family Values: "So let us assume someone's brother-in-law showed up in the palmy presound days of Hollywood, and his brother-in-law, a power on the lot or on the set, hoping to avoid a "touch," said "People, this is Bob and he is a producer." Bob was then, entitled, under the family flag, to all the sex, drugs and fun he could wrangle and to whatever he could hypothecate. Time went by and Bob stayed on. He, or another of his ilk, caught, stole, or otherwise achieved power in some niche of the industry and, having learned a good trick, one day appointed footmen of his own."

Modus Operandi: "This power exists, and can exist, only in potential--for should the committee ever come to conclusions, its task and so its operation as a bureaucratic fiefdom, would cease."

Growing Savvy: learning that success comes not from pleasing the audience, but from placating one's superiors, until such time as it is expedient to betray them.

Pinnacle of Success: getting rid of the artists and craftspeople; achieving the "art of producing nothing at all."

Nostalgia..."It is not that the fox has taken over the henhouse but, if I may, that the doorman has taken over the bordello. In the golden days of the madam (Harry Cohn et al.), the lives of the girls may not have been better, but the lives of the customers were. Why? Because the owner-proprietor knew that her job was simply and finally to please the customer. "

Behold! The Crepe Maker Cometh.

2007-09-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

As part of the health section of my third grade daughter's IB unit of inquiry, her teacher sent out a request to parents to help with a French-themed breakfast. It seemed a simple enough request. Bring in crepe batter. Come into class and make them.

How could I go wrong? I had fond memories of gorging myself on sugar-filled crepes that my French-raised grandmother would make for Mardi Gras. My mother was a chef. I remember her riding the subway to work, her army-issue carrying case filled with cooking knives jauntily swinging from her shoulder. Surely such can-do spirit might have rubbed off on me.

One reason for doing this was the extra brownie points needed to redeem myself from the "What do people do for a living?" unit. I had signed up for the "Creative" section, on the heels of so-and-so's gastroenterologist mother who came into class to talk about how the digestive systems works. In contrast, my presentation would be something along the lines of

"Hello, boys and girls. My name is Nathalie Mason-Fleury and I make things up for a living. That's actually a figure of speech because, so far, nobody pays me to do this. Today my colleague and I researched how to fake your own death. I don't have any medical, forensic or criminology degrees, but it only took me a few minutes to look this up on the Internet. Why would I bother with professional references when I read the National Inquirer? Look at how long it took Lacy Peterson's body to come floating back up. And they knew exactly where to look.

Things started to go wrong from the very beginning:

1) I doubled the batter proportions. However this caused the batter to overflow in the Cuisinart as the liquid level went higher than the middle blade attachment.

2) I then decided to guesstimate how much of the milk and water to replace, but probably didn't add enough flour, which made the batter a little runny.

3) Worse, we had to cook on these horrible plug in electric eye units that were underpowered and didn't heat enough. A Bunsen burner would have been better, as at least I'd have gotten some heat. It took an average of five minutes per side for each crepe to cook and I know that's not normal.

This confirmed what I had always suspected, that I would rather stand for eight hours at a software trade show with cheap carpeting in three inch heels, than deal with a class of cynical nine year olds.

"You're not very good at this are you?" "I'm a picky eater, I don't want the broken ones" "My dad is a great crepe maker," "how come they keep falling apart" "When is this going to be ready?" and proceeded to literally go down the toilet, as two of them starting singing: "Bob Marley, Jim Dandy, R. Poopy..."

The veteran teacher gave me some advice and consolation: "Next time, make them all ahead of time and bring some token batter. Send them off on some distracting activity. Then, 15 minutes later: Voila! 30 perfectly formed TurboCrepes. But don't worry, it's the weekend. That way if they get sick it will be at home with their parents and we won't have to deal with it."

I appreciated his wisdom and told him that if, one day, the teaching thing didn't pan out, he really should consider putting on software demos.

It’s Alive! Start-ups and Old Monster Movies

2007-08-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

In the movie Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s novel, Dr. Frankenstein attempts to create human life by sewing together disparate body parts. Only, none of it works until there is an electric storm, whose lightning bolt gives off the spark of life. Parallels can be found in the quest to build a successful startup, and in the relation between the surgical systems approach and what I’ll call, for a lack of better terminology, “the spark.”

A systems person wants neither drama, nor surprises. Skilled professionals in the start-up business optimize, customize (and improvise) a foundation of systems that worked well for them in the past--whether in sales structure, HR, finance, executive recruitment tactics, R&D, marketing etc. To make those systems work they look for teams with proven track records in the field. And, with a bit of luck, all this may be imbued with the spark—that rare zeitgeisty combination of the right idea, the right people, the right time.

A company could be a perfect system if it wasn’t for the messy, but necessary, “Human Element”—comprising the entrepreneurs, the artists, the “emmerdeurs,” the friends, the enemies, the relatives, the apparatchiks, the mercenaries, the visionaries, the small-minded, the amateurs, the pros, the traitors, the lovers, the people with the big goals, the people with the little goals, the advisers, the investors, and, oh yes, the customer. In short, what the French call “The Human Comedy” or “La Comedie Humaine.”

The spark without the system dissipates; meanwhile systems without the spark are empty vessels.

Whether the spark is a bolt of lightning striking some random unsuspecting dumbass, who wakes up to find himself plonked on a pot of gold, or the collective will of sentient beings, with objectives of their own, sparks do happen.

As for what happens from there, nothing is certain once the Creature shambles down the hill towards the unsuspecting and soon-to-be terrorized villagers.

PR and the Girl

2007-08-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

One of the fringe benefits of co-founding a company is giving yourself any job title you want. By the time the company was big enough to hire other people to do things like setting up trainings, billing/accounts payable, legal review et al., I had settled on Director of Communications.

While the only thing I've ever been able to convince anybody to pay me for in my professional life has been writing, my interviewing experiences, when we first moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1997, convinced me that PR was not for me.

The founder of one boutique tech agency asked me a series of validating questions along the lines of “Do you have many friends,” and, as I became progressively more self-conscious, she concluded “it’s obvious you are very ill-at-ease”--a doubtful prognosis, I imagine, of my ability to handle journalists.

My other interview was with a manager for a white shoe, pre-March 2000 “We-only-work-for-equity-thank-you-very-much,” plus enough retainer to keep its female staffers in Manolo Blahniks type firm. I read an interview with one of that agency’s founders, where she proudly mentioned how many software execs marry their PR girls, citing Steve Ballmer as an example. I considered the promise of “If you do well, you too can marry a future CEO.” I thought for a few seconds about Steve Ballmer. The monkey dance video (Developers, developers, developers!) hadn’t yet come out, but already the intimation of so much agitated, perspiration-drenched corpulence was there. I decided there were other professions where I could earn a living with writing.

I’d like to mention that I married the CEO BEFORE he was the CEO, six years before. When we did start JBoss, we were living at my parents’ house, and the only entity who even remotely reported to us was the family dog.

Ironically, I was once "Almost Featured in Rolling Stone." I had just graduated from Wellesley with a degree in English Literature. My success in getting interviews, coupled with equal success in remaining unemployed brought me to the attention of one of their writers doing a "getting the first job" profile for a series on Gen-X'ers. I am slightly embarrassed to say the prospect of anybody flying down from New York and paying attention to me quite went to my head. The article never got published, but we dined out on Rolling Stone's dollar (it was 1994, I was unemployed and Marc was a Ph.D. student), on stories of my unsuccessful interviews and bathos like "I used to write about Personality and Artistic Theory; now I write about evaporators and batch digesters." I even stooped so low as to play the Southern card, sharing some insight from my grandmother and her friends: "Honey we don't know what to tell you. After we graduated from college, we just joined the Junior League and started playing bridge."

So, it’s funny when some journalists tell Marc that other people in the industry ask about getting the JBoss treatment, like it was some option you could sign up for like PPO vs. HMO on your insurance coverage. ‘Cause I would imagine that to get the JBoss treatment, you’d kind a sorta have to be JBoss, or the people affiliated with JBoss, and there definitely were two sides to the treatment we got. If there was any defining insight in our communications strategy, it was the oh-so novel idea of saying exactly what we thought. As for communicating our thoughts credibly, you’d actually have to have done the things we did and lived the quirky experiences we lived.

You Better Shape Up!

2007-08-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

As my children returned to school last week, I felt the need to share some advice with my sister whose oldest child just started kindergarten: “Don’t be fooled about that homework your daughter comes home with. It’s not her homework, it’s your homework."

I don’t know if it was the eighties or just my parents, but they had a very laissez-faire approach to homework and grades. As long as my sister and I didn’t dip below B-/C+, the typical response to a lackluster grade on our report cards was “Did you try?” Or “Did you do your best?” to which we inevitably answered “Yes, I sure did,” translated to “I sure did try real hard to open that book,” and “I did the best I could considering I didn’t open it…”

Never having had real homework until third grade myself, and not having bothered to do any of it until fourth or fifth grade, having children in a school program where they feel the need to send you two or three email updates a day, where each of my children comes home with a notebook for communicating with their teachers daily, homework that needs to be personally supervised and checked daily and mothers who get into smack downs over who gets to be the “grade level rep” or what the annual fund-raiser tee-shirt will look like (“Really, Rose we all know you just want the bigger logo on the front to call more attention to your boobs”—and, no, I am not making this up), I felt like a total outsider, a feeling that was further compounded back when I was a working mother.

Just try doing homework with a tired child at the end of the day, when you are tired yourself. That was how I landed in so much trouble two years ago, along with a Georgia Tech Math professor and my husband, when we finally snapped and started an email thread expressing our feeling that with two Ph.D.’s, a Masters and a professional university teaching career among us, might it be a little excessive that none of us could figure out what our children’s First Grade homework assignments were.

Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis

2007-08-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

When the ghosts come out to taunt you and dance a jig on your tombstone, hopefully you’re not there. There was a time, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when it felt wrong and on a good day you could get paid to be wrong. Manifest Destiny was on your side. These days, it’s like re-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. Somewhere, along the way, after all the excitement and adventure, the Ark of the Covenant got lost. They tagged it for inventory and wheeled it off for storage in some anonymous government warehouse. And that’s when it hits you. The bureaucrats and accountants have won. You’ve grown up and they’ve won.

It’s like going back to one of your favorite haunts from the past and finding it under new management. They’ve redecorated, something to do with a cultural revolution or the curious ascendance of Shelob, but, damn it all, nobody knows where a bunch of high-altitude aerials of the San Francisco Bay and salt flats shot by a descendant of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, one-time President of the Republic of Texas, can be found.

Even if you did read Alexis de Tocqueville’s “De la Democratie en Amerique,” predicting the rise to power of complacent mediocrity, you never were quite prepared for the inevitability of the sock puppet figure bearing the title of Commander in Chief of the Greatest Power in the Free World, the man who happened to sit on the winning lottery number, but gradually came to believe himself to be solely responsible for the country’s success. If a doubt ever plagued his mind regarding this success or his competence to be where he was, he consoled himself with the thought that "God was on his side."

"Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis,"translates, "A cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy," M B Lamar, in a speech to Congress.